Royal Mail has lost my passport that I was sending back

[wecouldberightforeachother]

Posting here purely for traffic because what do I do?

I renewed my passport last week and posted it off using the tracked before 1pm service. It was picked up from my house on Tuesday and has now been stuck at “your item is due to be dispatched to the Home Counties” since Wednesday morning. It’s obviously lost.

what do I do now? Can I claim any extra cost back from Royal Mail? Will I still get my new passport? I’ve got a trip in February and need it renewed by then

Help! What do I do?

Contact Royal Mail and ask them why the tracking suggests it hasn’t been delivered. They need to initiate a process to locate it and ascertain why your paid for service hasn’t been provided. I wouldn’t assume it was lost just yet.

It’s only been a few days.

I’ve had similar with the DVLA where I assume everything arrives in sacks so they can’t sign for it individually and the tracking isn’t updated but it was fine

All you can do it wait, if it’s not updated by next week then maybe it really is lost

It’s not arrived in the Home Counties which is what I’m worried about. It’s not even made it to the delivery stage

Yes, this is the first thing to do.

And don't worry, even if it is lost you can still get a passport by February.

Try not to worry yet… there is so much going through the royal mail network, and they have a lot of temp staff at this time of year it has probably just missed a scan and will be on its way

I think this is a common issue when you post things to govt agencies because they receive thousands a day.

I bet your will receive your new passport in the post next week and the tracking on this one will never be updated. There’s not much you can do atm because it’s not considered lost yet

It’s now passed the guaranteed delivery time and it’s not been delivered to the Home Counties MC, let alone the passport office. Bloody brilliant

It’s not gone standard post, it’s guaranteed 1pm delivery. It’s not even been recorded as being at the Home Counties processing centre yet

Have you contacted royal mail?

Get on the blower to Royal Mail.

Seriously, just contact Royal Mail.

And say what? They’ve lost it!

Ask them to investigate what's happened. It's not automatically lost.....yet.....though I get the frustration.

I don't get this thread, contact the RM, why ask us!?

I agree that it has quite possibly been delivered but not scanned. It really does work a bit differently when it is sacks full of mail.

There's no proof of that. You keep saying it, but as many people have pointed out, it's just as likely that is hasn't been scanned somewhere. And if you're not prepared to do the sensible thing of checking with Royal Mail, again, as many people have suggested, what do you expect us to do?

Ring Royal Mail. Their customer service was really good when I had to use it.

I wouldn’t assume it’s lost. It’s either just stuck somewhere or the system hasn’t been updated. It will almost certainly pop out eventually.

I once had a parcel I was waiting on that got stuck in out for delivery for a week. It was DPD, not Royal Mail, but the driver clearly ran out of time and didn’t make the last of the deliveries for that day. Then he took the van home with him and went on holiday to Spain for a week! He remembered he had all the undelivered parcels still in the van on his first day back to work and apologised profusely when he did finally turn up.

I also had an incident with Royal Mail this year where I sent an important document (not a passport but similar) to the EU. It got stuck just like yours has. It turned out that the man in the post office forgot to affix the customs declaration. So it got to some processing centre somewhere but they couldn’t put it on the plane without that form. And there it sat! For 8 weeks. Then finally I got a letter 2 months later from RM saying sorry can’t deliver without the customs declaration, please resend with the correct documents. And then plop, my documents arrived back to me the following week. They did have quite a journey though while I waited for them to re-surface.

If you are not bothered to contact RM to investigate then what do you expect people on Mumsnet to do?

When I renewed mine, it got tracked and signed
for successfully but.. apparently the envelope was damaged and empty. I had to go online and complete a lost passport declaration to get it all moving again. Assuming you did the renewal online, have you checked your application, has anything updated on there?

Nope, nothing online either. I’m gutted

As everyone else has said, you need to contact Royal Mail. At this stage it might be lost, it might start moving again soon, or it might actually be at the Passport Office having missed a scan.

If it’s lost, you then tell the passport office that it’s lost, and they deal with this as though you’d lost it yourself. You have evidence of its loss from the tracking information which may help. Passports are only taking a couple of weeks at the moment so you have plenty of time.

Separately, you can deal with Royal Mail for having not provided a service that you have paid for. It depends on the T&C what you can expect in terms of a refund.

There’s no need to be dramatic and “gutted”. Nothing really bad has happened, has it? Just be annoyed, and fix the situation.

I would start making a fuss direct with RMG. It's December, customer service is going to be absolutely inundated so you need an acknowledgement that they collected it and mislaid it for HMPO.

Did they collect it from your house? Was it your usual postie?

HMPO have specific processing sites which they are in the process of consolidating so if your passport has been forwarded onto the new site, it may not show up until it arrives there instead. But still max 3 days.

Overreact much?