The cost of a passport is just stupid

[SoloTripSoloVibes]

That’s it really.

£94.50 for the actual passport, which is alright, I suppose.

£10 for the pictures because you need the fancy digital codes now and can’t just have a picture

£10 for guaranteed postage of the old one back to them, because of course they can’t just have a database that they update to say that one has expired or been replaced.

£115 in total! Bring on the days that it becomes totally digital.

For the last passport I had renewed I got someone to take pictures with my phone and upload them.

I wanted the old one posted back to me because it contains visas which are still valid.

It also contains records of which country I was in on particular days and for how long. After Windrush and then more recently the child benefit "our records show you emigrated" thing I'm not going to trust the government to keep records of where I was.

All these things carry costs and it is absolutely right that users pay them, rather than have it spread across all taxpayers.

You don’t have to pay for pictures, you can do them yourself.

It’s just ludicrously overpriced. For such a small document. It’s a book.

I took a photo on my phone for free, I also completed the forms on my phone, again, for free.

Also you can do it online. Much quicker and you can upload your own picture. It lasts ten years and is valuable id.

£94.50 for passport

£0.00 digital photo taken at home
£1.70 first class post to return old passport

don’t know why you paid extra.

It's also your freedom to travel the world for the next decade. With a chip, and enough features to stop it being forgeable.

Unless something has changed I don't think you have to pay for photos do you? I just got someone to take some on my phone against a white wall.

You can do it totally digital. Take a photo at home on your phone with a white background
I never pay for fancy postage on them

Have done the same thing with my own, my grandmother's and 2 DC passports at various times over the past 3 years. No issues and all came back within 1 week!

Is around a tenner a year ludicrously overpriced? I'm not sure it is

YABU just take your own photo. I did for all 5 of our passports

Weird way to look at it. It's not a book, it's a service. The service of your government legitimising your information so that other governments can allow you into their country in good faith and with legal channels to trace you if you break laws, etc. It's a legal service.

Do you not think that it takes someone trained to check and validate your application? Maybe more than a few minutes of their time?
This is an important document.
You're not paying for the cost of the actual passport with that fee but the admin and security checks necessary for it to be a trusted document.
So salary, infrastructure, security, plus the machines to actually print it...

They do cost a lot but last 10 years and the service they’re giving currently is extraordinarily good for a government department. I lost my passport and attended their office and they were so efficient - my passport arrived within 2 days.
I took my own photo and that was approved online on upload; the only tricky part was ensuring verification of identity but that was completed online via email.
Compared to the cost of travel, I believe they give good value for money.

Unless you need to travel for work, then a passport is optional, and lasts 1 years. Works out at less than £10 a year, for freedom to travel the world.

Yes, it's £115 but it's something you only have to do once every 10 years. So that's just over £10 a year. Not so bad when you think of it like that. Maybe if paying for multiple passports in a household, it would be easier from a budget point of view to pay an annual fee of a tenner each.

And the risk of it being turned down is a lot higher

Well you can save nearly £20 by taking the photo yourself and sticking the old passport in the normal post.

At less than. £10 a year, or 80p a month its a pretty good deal I'd say.

The website tells you if the picture is acceptable. Did you even try?

Pffft. Compare that to nearly £500 to get a taxi/ private hire licence!

(Which took nearly 3 months, and involved me making a 70 mile round trip to the council offices just to show them my ID documents among other complex and bureaucratic side missions 🙄)

It's the cost of running His Majesty's Passport Office.

I sometimes wonder how some people cope with life when they can't see bigger pictures like this.

Just follow the guildines, white background and no shadows. It’s super basic stuff

If you think it's a rip off just stay at home for holidays. We are incredibly lucky we can travel many places without obtaining a visa. Be thankful for that?

But it’s not, because you still have to pay for visas etc

The website tells you if the photo is okay or not before you submit it.

Also I’ve had a Photo Booth picture declined and they give you time to submit a new picture, it’s only if you don’t do it in the timescale given that it costs extra.