@Nothappyatwork
Well aren't you a smug little so and so? I've been waiting 10 weeks for my daughter's renewal and been told no guarantee passport will be ready by our August holiday. I can apply for an expedited service in a few days but again no guarantee, and that's tough luck.
How lovely for you that your passport arrived promptly. Any applications from mid May onwards seem to have flown through. (My adult son's took 16 days.) But there is a massive backlog of people who applied between the end of February and early May, when the official estimated time was maximum 6 weeks, and these are the ones in a black hole! The new applications are being prioritised for manipulation of figures so the smarmy government (what's left of it) can say "on average applicants are getting their passports well within 10 weeks, aren't we doing well, nothing to see here". There are 14,500 members of the FB passport chaos group in the same boat.
That's what the "fuss is about" you ignoramus.
OP, make sure the travel date is noted on the application if you haven't already. The HMPO text service will do this for you. It does work because I used the text service again a few days later and asked them to tell me what date they had.
You can email the upgrade team if the application is more than 6 weeks old. They will probably charge a fee. If more than 10 weeks old email the expedited services team.
If no movement you can visit a passport office. Can be your nearest not necessarily the one dealing with the application. Officially you aren't meant to but people are going and being seen, but unless you have an appointment, or are 24-48 hours before travel they may turn you away. You can go on behalf of someone else if you can show you have permission. Please be aware that some offices don't see any walk ins on Saturdays and all offices are closed Sundays.
Re getting an appointment. If you get a call back from the upgrade or expedite team they may give you an appointment to go and collect passport from an office on an appointment basis. Other than that appointments seem to be for fast track applications only and you can't apply for fast track if you have an application in the system already. If you wanted to withdraw app and reapply for fast track, be aware that if its a renewal you need to get the old passport back from HMPO. I enquired about this and the Belfast office said it could take 3-4 weeks to find it so I gave up on that idea. Also make sure there are fast track appointments available. Some are released each evening so you have to keep checking!
Good luck OP. Its utterly shambolic and I feel like those of us who applied early for summer holidays are somehow being punished and the Johnny come Latelies who left it until June are getting theirs within days! Crazy!