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Useful information about TUI. I spoke to them a fortnight ago because we had sent off our son’s expired passport for renewal 9.5 weeks before our holiday. They advised of £1.5k amendment fees if we wanted to amend our holiday to a later date if it didn’t come back in time, which obviously got me into a hot flap. Fortunately his passport came back in just under 3 weeks. I did think that they would offer more flexibility as a household name and given the huge issues at the passport office, so I’m glad they’re offering this to people who have been waiting over 10 weeks. If anyone is in a similar position with TUI, you can also amend a passenger up to 10 days before going, so if our son’s passport hadn’t come back, I could still have gone with my mum, and not have entirely lost all our money.
Does anyone have any idea how long Liverpool take to say the upgrade has been accepted? We fly out week tomorrow and am waiting for a response still as to if the upgrade has been successful and i am getting very nervous
I have been following this site for many weeks and enormously grateful to all who have posted and help keep me sane. I would not have coped without it.
My daughter is getting married in France next week and 12/13 March my son applied for 3 passports for my grandchildren.
1 renewal
1 renewal and name change
1 first passport
It took a month for documents to be loaded on the application for all 3
The renewal took 7 weeks to be approved. After that it all went quiet.
My son and I both wrote to our MP’s which did not seem to help. He has constantly emailed and spent hours on the telephone.
On Monday he got a call to say the first passport had been approved
Yesterday he was telephoned for more information for the third one. This is information that was sent a month ago. He resent it again. 10 mins later they rang to say approved and can collect today. Due to fly on Sunday. Talk about cutting it fine but the Upgrade did work for us. So keep hope. I wish you all good luck and thank you again for all your posts.Ugh! Bad news for me.
So just want to remind everyone about their COVID passports!
My friend got her passport yesterday morning, she picked it up from Peterborough and came straight to Birmingham airport to meet us. We were due to fly out at 2.15pm.
After being in the check in line for an hour and a half, as they didn’t open check in for our flight until 12.30pm, we were asked for our COVID passports. Me and 2 other friends showed ours but my friend who only picked her passport up that morning, had forgotten all about the COVID one due to all of the stress for her normal passport.
She tried logging onto the NHS app to download a PDF copy, but it wanted her to prove her identity with a photo of her passport and would take up to 24 hours to verify. You couldn’t even make this up!
The woman at checkout said the only other option was to run upstairs and get a rapid test, so we run upstairs and they said because she had to book the test online, pay for it then go through all the info and wait for the results etc, they wouldn’t get it done in time. So unfortunately she couldn’t go.I wasn’t going to leave her on her own so I sent my other 2 friends off and I stayed with her, so we’ve missed our holiday. We tried looking for different flights but it was too expensive and cost more than what the actual holiday cost! So yeah, we missed out.
So please remember your COVID passports! You can download the NHS app and download a PDF copy of it or have it sent straight away to your email.
I truly believe if she didn’t have this stress of her normal passport, she would have remembered to get her COVID passport sorted sooner.But, it is what it is. Gutted, but I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if I just left her stranded at airport after all the stress she went through to get her actual passport.
We’ve booked another holiday for May next year, and we both have a week off work, so, silver linings and all that.
As an earlier post said (and thank you for letting us about it) …
Just wanted to let you all know that I spoke to TUI and they have confirmed that it is an option to move the holiday if you have proof of waiting 10 or more weeks without an admin fee. But you can only can do this up to 3 days before travel.
So now I feel I am gambling on the upgrade team even more! My plan had been to go to Peterborough 48 hours out.Positive story:
We travel 3/6/22.
Applied online for 2 x child first passport in February, they were verified together, documents sent/received together (Peterborough), then in April 1 was approved and 1 stated verification was required – despite us having conformation this had successfully been done.
Cue over a month of constant phone calls and emails plus MP involvement with no information given. The website also wouldn’t allow me to set up a further verification.
A fortnight ago I spoke to a helpful person who looked into it, admitted the error and told me about the upgrade service. By this time the app was at Belfast. I emailed on 20 May, didn’t get an automated or any response, my MP emailed on 24 May and then yesterday I got a phonecall from Belfast to say it was going to be processed with no charge, he rang me back 10 mins later to say it had even done and would be posted ASAP via royal mail signed for. It came this morning!
Holiday waiting what did you put when you emailed your MP? i emailed mine and his office basically replied go away we can’t do anything. Just wondering if i word my email better he might actually try and help
Hi there all,
Does anybody know when applying for upgrade, you have to collect thew passport from the office it’s always been processing with.
Just found out my application is with Peterborough, however, my closest office is Belfast.
Will I have to fly to Peterborough to collect?
Does anyone have any good news stories about turning up at Durham passport office 48 hours before they fly?
I have applied for the upgrade and rang one of the numbers and spoke to a lovely guy who has put an email through for me as well. I’m just readying myself in case i don’t get a callI’ve originally contacted the Durham
Upgrade team on the 18th of may as I’m due to fly 1st of June and got the automated response but 9 days later I’m still waiting for a call from themHi pclem0003,
I used the passport upgrade service and had the option for the passport to be sent via Royal Mail’s special delivery service. They called on Monday morning, said they could get my son’s passport printed the next day and said it would be delivered by Royal Mail on Wednesday by 1pm, which was ok for us. There was also the option to collect from the passport office but I live in South West England and the passport was processed in Glasgow, so wasn’t convenient. Hope this helps.
A word of caution when you sent your email requesting the upgrade. Be aware that the email address can be case sensitive. I didn’t know that was the case and I had originally sent the request to glasgowupgradeteam@hmpo.gov.uk (all in small case). I didn’t get an automated confirmation message (I didn’t know I was meant to receive one) but also didn’t get any failure message indicating that it wasn’t delivered, so I thought everything was ok. I then waited for 6 days (4 working + weekend) and had heard nothing back so was getting worried. I called the passport enquiry line and the lady I spoke to was the one that told me that I should have received an acknowledgement and I should resend the email. When I double checked the address with her she mentioned that she believed it was case sensitive and the correct address was GlasgowUpgradeTeam@hmpo.gov.uk. So I forwarded the original email to that address and got the automated response straight after. I can’t tell you how I felt at that point, realising the amount of time that had been wasted, only 9 days away from the day we were traveling.
I was next to the phone all day the next day (Friday 20th) hoping I would get a call from Glasgow and when the day ended and heard nothing back I lost all hope. Then a small miracle happened. They called me on Monday morning, as I mentioned earlier, told me I could have the passport on Wednesday, which we did. We are flying this evening 🙂
Apologies for the long message.
Hope it gives hope to everyone.Just to give some people hope. We applied for my daughters’ passports on 30th March. We got one back in three weeks but there was an issue with the other one that nobody could explain. It appeared to be stuck in processing. We shared the same stress of endless phone calls to the helpline only to be cut off etc. When you do get to speak to someone they are completely useless. They are clearly working from home and have no access to the application. They tell you someone from the progress team will call you within 72 hours. They don’t and the cycle begins again. The gut wrenching feeling of being in limbo and not being able to speak to someone is very stressful.
We emailed the Glasgow upgrade team within 2/52 of travel. Got an automated response. Fair enough. Gave it a week and emailed them again on Monday. Got another response from them, looked automated but it did note our travel date which gave us optimism that it had at least been looked at. Got to Wednesday and thinking there were only 2 working days left before travel I emailed my MP. Unbelievably proactive on my behalf! She cc’d in a staff member who visited the Home Office Passport Hub and did whatever they do. This morning I got a phone call to say passport ready at 14:00 at Glasgow office. Big shout out to Lisa Cameron MP ( I’ll let her off being snp today!!). I now have the passport, the MP has chocolates.
Good luck to everyone. My advice is definitely seek other routes than the helpline. They are 100% useless and it is unbelievable they are being paid as civil servants. They are half wits trained to fob you off.No. Mine was apparently processed in Durham but printed in Glasgow, I live in Glasgow btw. The whole thing is a complete shambles.
I would contact your MP again. Mine had a staff member go to the Home Office Passport Hub and deal with it on my behalf. I could not believe how proactive they were. I had my daughter’s passport in my hand 48 hours after emailing my MP. She replied telling me what a shambles the whole set up was. She is SNP though and probably hates the Tories 😂😂. Good thing I didn’t mention how I vote! Email your MP again and tell him/her to get their finger out. They are elected officials there to serve you.
@pclem0003 ⬆️
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