The Upgrade is a joke. We applied for my son’s first passport on the 13th March and its been in processing for a very long time.
However, we go on holiday a week on Friday (13th May) and so sent in a request for Upgrade. We were told to send it to our local passport office (Glasgow) as that is 40 mins from where we live. Roll on to this morning and I call up to find out why I haven’t been contact only to find that yesterday the Glasgow Office sent it to Peterborough as it has to be done through the original office in charge of the application.
No doubt this puts me back to square one in terms of waiting.
So a few points to summarise from me:
– the “Advice Line” is useless ad is manned by Robots unable to do anything under the constraints of their training/role
– Most of the Advice Line advisors don’t even have access to the system which gives them the notes on the file, you need to try and get hold of the Progress team or similar
– make sure you don’t listen to the “Advice Line” and send any Upgrade Request to the office your passport is already being dealt with
– there is no way to track the progress of an upgrade. No person I have spoken to on any number can contact them and therefore cannot tell you anything
– don’t ever expect a call back on anything from anyone in the passport office. I have been waiting for weeks for call backs