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Hi, just wanted to share the way to track the delivery of your passport if you have applied from overseas. Did not manage to find a way to do it on this forum, hence some may find this info useful.
If you are outside the UK your passport and the supporting documents will be delivered by DHL or their partner in your country. Normally you’ll get an email and/or a text with you tracking number. In my case I received neither, HMPO were also unhelpful both via email and on the phone. So I had to find a way to get the tracking info myself.
After some googling, here is what I have found. DHL have a page to track shipments by shippers reference (https://mydhl.express.dhl/fr/en/tracking.html#/track-by-reference) where all you need to do is to paste your application reference number without the PEX or any other letters in front of it. Dates can be left as they are, the other fields can also be left blank.
Do not be alarmed if the system does not find any data. In my case HMPO said they have sent the passport on the 1st of August, the tracking info was only available on the 3rd at midday. If the info is available, it will contain an actual waybill number that can be used with a normal DHL tracker or a 3rd party solution.
The route for tracking your supporting documents is exactly the same, you will need to use the same HMPO application number at the same DHL page to find an actual waybill number. I am not sure how much time it takes for the supporting documents to show up in the system, haven’t gotten that far yet.
Perhaps this is tantamount to the data not being present. I am also trying to ascertain when it might arrive. Mine was labelled as ‘printed’ today at 17:09 PM. Is it safe to assume that it will not be sent until tomorrow morning?
Should I bother staying home tomorrow? What about Friday? Are deliveries always likely to be made in the morning or might they also be made in the afternoon?@Nawa, yes, invalid code is what you should be getting until DHL picks up your passport. Then it will show on the system and will give you the waybill number which is what you need to track your passport through DHL network.
As I understand when it says that passport has been sent in the HMPO application tracker, it just means that it is ready for shipping, not that it had actually been sent. For me it was 2 days from printed and “sent” to actually being in the hands of DHL, one of the advisors told me it can take up to 5 days.
In terms of should you stay home tomorrow or not I can’t say, but I think it is safe to assume that until you get your tracking number from DHL your passport hasn’t left the HMPO office.
Delivery times that DHL are showing for me is just “by end of day”. Not sure they are ever more precise than that. Although I know roughly what time I will get it as I know what time the local courier is in my neighbourhood usually.
A quick add to Alex’s excellent thread starting post. I did recieve an eMail from DHL confirming my passport had shipped (about a day and a half after it had been printed) which included the waybill No et al.
Alex’s info up thread still holds good tho’ and one can track it using the PEX No. minus the PEX (if that is not an oxymoron) if one does not recieve an eMail from DHL.
Once one has that one can sign up for SMS and eMail alerts.
A further quick update:
I logged into my DHL tracking page with the PEX no. yesterday and I noted that a second item has been added to the page with a different waybill No. (I assumed this is my supporting docs and old passport) about 10 hours later I get an email from DHL to confirm that is the case. Even though there is a 24 hour difference between the two packages entering the DHL network the estimated delivery date are both the same.
Another point to be aware of, DHL have confirmed to me once the package as left the UK DHL sorting hub one does not get another update until an arrival scan in the destination country, which I must say say is a little un-nerving. As when I sent my docs into HMPO in Liverpool with Fedex, it was tracked through thier entire network. I assume this is down to the contract HMPO has with DHL to cut costs, or is it the way DHL operate?
I hope this is all of use to overseas applicants.
To close this out, 4 days after my passport was printed it arrived in the Philippines. Which is nothing even by UK standards. Mine renewal was bang average renewal. Of the 11 weeks too and fro Blighty it was six days in total that my my docs were in transit.
Keep faith everybody.
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