Going abroad (maybe) in two weeks. Problem with dd's application. Passport office won't get in contact!

[passportpanic]

!!!!!

I'm seriously really worried.

We haven't been on holiday properly in years and it's ALL my dd can talk about. She's had a rough year, so this was going to be extra special.

Due to a name change recently, it made the process more complicated. That said, we got together all the documentation we needed and went over the check list again and again.

We then get an email to say a document was missing, so we needed to send that off before they could continue processing.

We 100% know that document was included, so we called to query. They said they'd put in our query, but we couldn't speak to the passport office directly and we'd have to wait for them to get back to them, before they could get back to us.

That was 4 days ago.

What do we do? I've used some inheritance on this holiday. It seems such a mess.

Any advice or calming words?

Ring them daily. The number is on any emails they’ve sent you. Ask to speak to the progress team (they can read the notes and see scanned documents which normal call handlers can’t). I went through this recently with dh’s passport. We’d sent the dc’s applications in at the same time and they’d attached his documents to theirs instead of his own when they checked. I had to harass them daily for 4-5 days until documents were sorted. Once they got the right documents it only took 5 days to receive the passport though.

0300 330 0901 was the number I called

Thank you, howmany. I should have said that we actually have been calling them daily. A couple of times actually, because they don't call us back, we have to call them back, but all they have on their system is X document missing, which it isn't!

Is the missing document one you can resend or do try have the original?

It's a hand written letter. I don't know if it has to be the original they need

You can resend the letter if you can get another (I had to do that too for one of the dc’s as they couldn’t read the first person’s handwriting!)

It should take about 2-3 days for the second letter to be scanned once received, but they can start checks in the meantime. Has an assessor been allocated? If not, press them to do that so they can get started. 2 weeks is still manageable, plus once everything is received you can normally pay for 24hour service (£110 though...)

Thanks everyone. I'm keeping everything crossed it's sorted asap.

Howmany, is it really a 24hr service?