Renewing British passports overseas

[FarangGirl]

I have 3 kids and need to renew all their passports. My oldest is going to have to have an adult passport now too.

If I apply from where I live, it'll cost 89.5 pounds for each child one and 118.5 for the adult so a total of 297.5 punds (this includes a courier fee of 23 pounds per passoirt) . Plus we need to submit and pick up in person at the visa application centre. And we need to get the kids' photos taken. And it takes 11 weeks.

However, if we apply online in the UK, it'll only cost us 173.5 pounds for all 3 passports (plus courier costs to us but we can then only pay one set of courier costs for all three passports).

I'm wondering if we shouldn't just do it online and get the passports sent to someone in the UK who can then courier the passports directly to us. Ridiculous that it'll cost us nearly twice as much plus all the additional hassle involved.

Anyone done this? Any reason not to do it?

They get lost on the way to you leaving you stranded?

Sure but we will use a good courier service for important documents so not too worried about that.
I should say as well that my kids have a second nationality and another passport (which has the visa for our current country in it) so even in the event that something happened, we could still travel.

I'm just renewing my passport in the UK and I have to send them my other passport from another country. Would you be prepared to do that?

If you're a dual national and you renew your British passport from overseas then you only have to send a full color copy of your 2nd passport (I did this last month from the USA).
My understanding is that if you renew from within the UK, you have to actually send in your 2nd passport, not just the copy.
If you're having your new passport sent to a UK address then you might be classed as applying from within the UK. You'll need to double check that, then decide if you're prepared to send in your 2nd passport too.

We applied online for our dc's passport. We have to pay a courier fee to the country we are living in but it has been a smooth process so far.

DHL have a very good service for sensitive/important documents, I have used them to send a passport back to my DH from the UK. This was not a renewal though.

Ohhh, I hadn't realised about the 2nd passports to be sent in. No, we won't want to leave ourselves with no passports at all for the kids.

Other option for us is to enter the UK on foreign passports and renew the passports while in the UK using the 1 week service.

Or just suck up all the hassle and cost of doing it overseas. Soonest appointment here is only in another 2 weeks - you'd think given how much we are paying over the odds, they'd have the passport centre well staffed!

Or rather enter the UK on expired passports but travel out of UK on our foreign passports (which we would do anyway since that's where the visas are)

Ahh, not out of UK, out of our current country.

Ugh, I'm not doing a good job of positng here!

Hmm, actually the 1 week thing doesn't save us money or hassle. Also needs to be done on paper and need to go to post office etc and is even more expensive.

Guess I'll need to suck up 300 pounds on passport renewal, doing it on paper and traipsing into the city centre twice!

Other option for us is to enter the UK on foreign passports and renew the passports while in the UK using the 1 week service

We did this with our youngest when we moved back to the UK shortly after he was born. While there is no rule saying you can’t do this, we got a really hard time at immigration about it.

@SherryPalmer

Yes, we did too when we entered with a foregin passport for our newborn as we hadn't yet got a British one for her.
But I read that expired passports are actually fine to enter the UK.

At any rate, I've decided to just suck it all up and do the renewal from here, while grumbling at having to pay double and all the hassle of doing a paper version and going into the city to deliver the documents and pick up the passports.

Although I think if you are going to move to live, that's when it creates problems as you will have a stamp in the foreign passport and then, technically, you'll be in the stats as an overstayer.

If you're going for a visit, it's much easier as you can then enter and leave on that same passport and then they don't care as much (if at all).

My kids' other nationality is MUCH stricter and they legally have to enter and leave the country on that passport if they are nationals.

There is no guarantee that you would sent all 3 passports to one address if you applied from within the UK.

AFAIK, the from abroad passports seem to get prioritised in the pile. Certainly ours, when renewed from abroad, came back faster than standard uk renewals were taking at that point in time (in one case, under a week from posting abroad to back in our hands!!)

Well, considering that the soonest I can even get an appointment to submit the documents is two weeks and also that they say it will take up to 11 weeks to arrive back (as opposed to five weeks in the UK) then I hope to be pleasantly surprised.
To be honest, the time isn't a huge concern as we don't plan to travel until July and the kids have a second passport they can travel on in the worst case scenario.

Are you sure you need to submit documents somewhere? I thought all Embassies had stopped passport related activity, and it was all done online and the couriers to HMPO in the UK?

Nope. We have to do it all with paper application and then go to the bloody UK visa application centre to submit the documents and pick up the passports.
I thnk the process differs by country

I've just / in process of renewing on of my DC's UK passports from an EU country.

We only had to send full colour copy of EU passport along with old UK one. Photos I did myself on my phone - first one was rejected but second ok and passport now approved. The whole thing was done online, no printing/signing of anything. Getting a copy of the other passport the most difficult part.

It said 11 weeks online for it to be processed, but we've just been approved after 5, and that included a wait of two weeks for the docs to show as received in UK and me having to resubmit the photos for approval again.

Yes, the cost is galling, but it's just another one of those expenses you have to suck up being overseas

Ds first passport in 2020 took 6 months! Fortunately covid meant we didn’t have huge travel plans, but I sent it when he was 2 weeks old and took forever. Meant we couldn’t cross the local boarder either ( about 30 min drive away)

It wasn't just the cost which was bad enough (I mean, paying a separate courier cost for EACH passport, why?). It was that in Thailand they make you do it all by paper and then traipse into the centre of Bangkok to have an appointment with the VFS (which we had wait two weeks for). We had to go and get the photos done physically and then I had to go and get the countersigner to sign in person all the forms. It was a real kerfaffle and has taken up an inordinate amount of time! If we could have done it all online, it would have been so much quicker.
And then the Thai staff employed by the VFS decided to use the rather annoying Thai bureaucratic habit of interpreting rules on a whim. So there was a whole fight about 'proof of residence' where the guidance clearly states ONE form of proof is needed which can include visas. We had provided colour photocopies of each and every page of the foreign passports, in which there was the visa. But, no, apparently visas don't count (eventually after calling the manager and lots of back and forth, they did accept it). Then one photocopy cannot be used for two purposes, even in the same application for the same person. No, we had to go and make another colour photocopy of the colour photocopy included for each of the visas. FFS.

Rant over. We don't just pay more but they make the whole process more difficult as well. I've renewed the passports for our other nationalities and it's nowhere near as difficult.

Oh, and we will need to traipse back into the VFS centre in the middle of Bangkok to pick up the passports (only during working hours of course)

@FarangGirl

It wasn't just the cost which was bad enough (I mean, paying a separate courier cost for EACH passport, why?). It was that in Thailand they make you do it all by paper and then traipse into the centre of Bangkok to have an appointment with the VFS (which we had wait two weeks for). We had to go and get the photos done physically and then I had to go and get the countersigner to sign in person all the forms. It was a real kerfaffle and has taken up an inordinate amount of time! If we could have done it all online, it would have been so much quicker. And then the Thai staff employed by the VFS decided to use the rather annoying Thai bureaucratic habit of interpreting rules on a whim. So there was a whole fight about 'proof of residence' where the guidance clearly states ONE form of proof is needed which can include visas. We had provided colour photocopies of each and every page of the foreign passports, in which there was the visa. But, no, apparently visas don't count (eventually after calling the manager and lots of back and forth, they did accept it). Then one photocopy cannot be used for two purposes, even in the same application for the same person. No, we had to go and make another colour photocopy of the colour photocopy included for each of the visas. FFS.

Rant over. We don't just pay more but they make the whole process more difficult as well. I've renewed the passports for our other nationalities and it's nowhere near as difficult.

Sorry it's all such a nightmare for you. It's never straightforward doing things from afar - usually just when you think it's all sorted something else rears it's ugly head.

I don't quite understand why applying from some countries they allow online renewal and others they don't. And why we need to have all our documents delivered to and checked by the VFS and not in other countries. We're all British nationals. I haven't become a scammer since I moved to Thailand that I can't be trusted to submit online!

I’m in another country that requests this and in our case it’s actually a good thing because it allows us to just send away copies of our passports and keep the originals until the new passports arrive back at the VFS. The local government here then counts the date of issue as when we pick up from the VFS rather than the date printed in the passport which is good because we only have 10 days to get visas and permits transferred into the new passport here.

@FarangGirl

I don't quite understand why applying from some countries they allow online renewal and others they don't. And why we need to have all our documents delivered to and checked by the VFS and not in other countries. We're all British nationals. I haven't become a scammer since I moved to Thailand that I can't be trusted to submit online!

When I lived in China we had to take all the documents and a complete copy of the passport (including blank pages) to the uk visa centre for them to submit the application. We were allowed to keep our passports for identification purposes but they were cancelled for overseas travel. Then new passports also had to be collected in person. It was a giant pain, particularly when I went to collect dh’s new passport and they could not find it...