Expectations of Passport Application ‘Being Looked At’.

[Evakos]

Hi,

I made my application on the 9/6 from overseas (I am in Greece) and am due to travel on the 13th of August. I had no idea about the long waiting times, I’m afraid it didn’t even occur to me that the passport is invalid to travel within 3 months of the expiry date, so that is absolutely my fault, but since it was a renewal expected the turnaround to be reasonably fast, despite the 10-12 weeks.

I spoke to a lot of customer service officers and sent many mails, knowing that information would be sparse. I was however surprised to receive a mail on the 22nd July that stated:

I am pleased to confirm that we received your application in our office and it is currently being looked at.

I expected that if this was true then the process would be quick, but my application has still not been updated.

I spoke to another Customer Service Officer who suggested if they’d stated that then it may be that the supporting documents were okay, which I thought was odd since wouldn’t it have been put in a processing queue and updated? The person couldn’t elaborate further. Thinking about it maybe that were speculating more than they should, but they were trying to help as much as they could.

Does anybody have any experience of what this means? How is it being looked at – did they mean it is literally being examined? Obviously since they said this, what is the delay?

At this late stage it doesn’t look like I’m going to receive the passport on time. I never expected to be so stressful to be honest, but here I am – with many others!

I can apply for an ETD since I’m overseas, but this also has complications since there’s a potentially a whole lot of cost involved in traveling to the embassy.

Thanks for reading, good luck to others reading this!

Chris

[vicching]

Any updates? I am thinking to apply for ETD too, but worry it could affect my renewal application. Any thoughts?

[Evakos]

Hi,

I applied for one, they told me as long as you state that it’s with the HMPO in Durham it won’t affect the passport application. I should have by ETD tomorrow, it was so easy to do online and they called me from the Embassy to verify a couple of things when I forget to include a transition country (Bulgaria) I didn’t even have to do a formal interview and they courier it. Obviously make your own inquiries because each circumstance is different. My passport is definitely not coming on time now, but pleased to have the ETD on the way.

Chris

[vicching]

Thanks Chris, I will try my luck to do the ETD then.

[Evakos]

I received my passport today we travel on Saturday – so that’s pretty good it was printed and dispatched seemingly on the same day. I don’t know whether my many emails helped but now i have an ETD and a passport which is great because I’d have expected delays and the Bulgarian border with the ETD.

[vicching]

Feel happy for you evakos. I ain’t sure if you needa inform the ETD office to cancel it coz you’ve got your passport already?

I’ve applied the ETD too but they put my application on hold until two weeks before my flight, saying my passport might arrive anytime soon…. hope they are right.

[Author]

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