Help! Lost passports and travelling on Saturday!

[winterrabbit]

We are supposed to be going on holiday on Saturday but have lost our passports. I have literally spent the last 24 hours turning the house upside down and they are not here. I can only conclude that i chucked them out by mistake or someone nicked them (we have had a nanny and a couple of workmen in the house but noone I think would steal them). Tried to book a fast track appointment to replace them and it says no appointment available and from what i am reading we are not going to be able to get one for weeks at best. We can't cancel the flights and DS is going to miss the football tour we were going to. The flights was extortionate as well. I honestly feel like jumping off a cliff.

She's usually super organised, I'm not sure what happened that time! Just relieved she found it and we made our flight!

Any chance it could fall down between wall and mantelpiece? Behind drawers inside, such as fallen out back of drawer and stuck inside? Maybe take drawers out and look inside frame.

He could have your Son's passports but that wouldn't explain how yours is also missing?

I'd say it's entirely possible he forgot to give them to you - perhaps he packed them, so has a memory of intending to give them back but maybe they're still in his car or somewhere?

But that doesn't help find yours...

My mum once found her passport in a random handbag in the loft. It may be that their dad needs to turn over his house, too? Just in case. Sometimes we remember what we expect to have happened because that's how we've always done it, eg, putting the passports away safely, but in the chaos/excitement, perhaps it just didn't happen that way. Good luck, really rooting for you.

No it doesn't but I have a passport with another nationality that I could use (assuming it works, have never actually used it) and DS2 could go and wouldn't miss out. Urggh, what a horror show.

Argh, this is my nightmare!
Sounds like you have done a pretty intensive search already, but all I can suggest now is that you go back through whatever clothes you might have been wearing when your ex brought your DSs back, and check the pockets again.
I doubt very much you have thrown them out, or that they've been nicked - maybe they've just gone inside something else in your home office? Again, I appreciate you've already searched thoroughly but maybe just empty out all the files, shake out all the books etc., just in case? If they're not in any sensible places then all the insane places need to be checked too.

And you could always try praying to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. Can't hurt, even if you don't believe in it!
Good luck

We lost our passports once and it turned out we'd left them in the car. I don't know why they were in there! I found them after we'd all got replacement passports.

Check behind the fireplace. It’s amazing what get stuck behind the fire surround.

honestly your only hope is to try get a forged passport

Try car glove box

This might sound weird but for me, self hypnosis works really well at times like this. You can tune out all distractions and get hyper focused. Mentally put yourself back in the last situation you remember seeing them and work forward from there, step by step. I used a book but I'm sure you can get audio hypnosis tracks online.

Good luck anyway

You mention they may have been on the radiator - could they have slipped down behind it? Between the radiator and the wall? We once lost some mail into that black hole.

It's so incredibly unlikely that someone stole your passports from your house. I know there is a trade for stolen passports but it isn't something that any random opportunistic thief can take advantage of - you need to know the right people to sell it to. You essentially need to be involved in some sort of organised crime ring. I really doubt that your nanny or the bloke plastering the spare room would fit that description.

I would shake this idea that they must be in your home office. They might be, but they could be anywhere else in the house. I would come to it with fresh eyes and remove any preconceived notions about where they must be. Search all the places that they "couldn't" be, because you wouldn't put them there.

No it doesn't but I have a passport with another nationality that I could use (assuming it works, have never actually used it) and DS2 could go and wouldn't miss out.

If you have valid passports of another country, you can travel on them. Wh do you think it wouldn't work?
Thankfully, UK isn't anal about this unlike other countries (yes, US, I'm looking at you). It may take a bit of explaining why you don't have a stamp and also they will ask you to regularise your status after entry with a visa but, legally, you can travel on a foreign passport into and out of UK even as a UK national (and I'm assuming passport control will be sympathetic given the shit show of HMPO at the moment).

This ! I lost school photos and a birth certificate between the mantel piece and the wall . Had no idea that things would slip through the tiny gap .

You mention a radiator, I think I’d be getting that radiator off the wall for a good look down the back!

Good luck, OP.

Take the bottom drawer out and check the base of any set of drawers in case they’ve slipped out of the drawer and are sitting at the bottom. Have you checked your coat pockets in case you stuck them in your pocket when you received them. Did your ex bring the kids back to your house or did you pick them up so they may be in your car. Get your ex to make sure he hasn’t still got them.

Why are there no urgent appointments available??

When this happened to us there was no way of sorting out an urgent replacement because you can't use the on the day service for lost passports, your passport is delivered within a week. DD only discovered the issue four days before travel and there were no appointments for a week.

Firstly, for a lost passport, the one day service isn't an option, it's a one week service.

Secondly, I don't mean to sound nasty, but 'urgent appointment'? You're going on holiday, I'd define urgent as needing to travel abroad for unavoidable reasons such as death, illness etc. Etc

What is the football thing he is going to?

Why wouldn’t it “work”? Unless it’s expired or been cancelled (reported lost/stolen), it’s a valid passport.

It is urgent as far as I'm concerned and there should be a same day or two day service for situations like this. We are a first world country, right and people do lose stuff? Waiting weeks is just not acceptable. I accept I need to pay but there is nothing I can do to avoid losing around 2.5k and disappointing my son who has waited over 2 years for this. All his friends are going.

Unfortunately most of the regional Passport Offices were closed in favour of an online service. And the usual Urgent service is covering for the well publicised backlog (half-a-million applications) that's still to be cleared - at the moment the backlog is growing. A combination of renewals that weren't made over the last couple of years because people weren't travelling, service delays due to Covid staff shortages in the Passport Office and capacity problems because secure processing of applications didn't lend itself to WFH, and the usual summer rush to renew.

You just need to keep searching.

Well, ultimately this whole situation arose due to your carelessness (nice deflection with the “stolen” story - and even if they were, they were “stolen” from inside your house with no mention of any break-on or anything else being “stolen” so that would be carelessness again). Had you not been so careless, you wouldn’t need an emergency appointment. Get off MN and get looking if this is so important to your children. What help do you think you can get from here? It won’t find the passports and won’t get an appointment any faster.

But if you and ds2 have a second passport is there really an urgent issue? Once found a missing birth certificate wedged inside a cupboard behind the shelf. It was in an envelope and the cupboard dark so missed it.