Royal Mail Vs Passport Office

[Chattenoire]

I sent my son's old passport via special delivery on the 2nd of November. Should have got there a week ago.

RM tracking doesn't work, and they say that for government offices they really don't track due to high volumes.

Passport office says nothing has arrived.

Is this common? Shall I just sit and wait? Is it lost?

Neither of them are giving any real updates!!

Very strange they say they don’t do tracking to government offices. I sent my son’s renewal on Wednesday Royal Mail special delivery by 1pm. I could see it was delivered with a signature on the Thursday. HMPO logged it as received on Friday. Got a message yesterday that it was approved.

From Reddit I can tell it's not that abnormal and two different agents at RM have told me exactly the same thing, so I'm assuming it DOES happen.

I have to admit, I was shocked at the speed (I assumed min 2 weeks to get to approval point). I sent it to their Hemel Hempstead address if that helps?

The HMPO passport says there can be a delay in them receiving the documents to them linking to your application so you get the notification of receipt. Fingers crossed you hear back very soon!

Website not passport!

I had a delay on this when I renewed my son’s passport as the envelope arrived but without a passport in it!! So tracking didn’t update as they refused to sign as delivered and I only found this up after calling many times. Turns out it is a frequent occurrence.

What would be the point in using a tracked service if they don't bloody track it! What does the tracking say?

There is often a delay in them receiving things and it being logged. It might be sat in a pile at the passport office waiting to be dealt with

Did you get your son's passport in the end? Who resolved the issue ? RM or the passport office?

I find it bizarre that the latest update I had was "despatched to Midlands MC"

It just has an update from a wee ago "despatched to South Midlands MC"

We've had two passports go mysteriously missing from the envelope on the way to the passport office for renewal! We had to report them as lost, but didn't have to start the application again. It just held things up a bit.

If it's not urgent you could wait longer to see if it's just waiting to be processed somewhere, but I renewed DD's very recently and it took under a week from them receiving the old one to us getting the new one, so long processing delays seem unlikely.

Mine was "missing" for 3 weeks but then once it actually got opened I had it within the week. I think the delay is on the post room at the passport office

Did royal mail show it as delivered?