Passport hell... and back

Rachel was looking forward to a much-earned holiday with her new baby and family. However, her timing to get a new passport for her daughter ,and renewals for her two sons, became very tight and nearly led to them missing a week of their holiday.

Rachel wanted to tell her story so that other families would take note and learn from her mistakes!

• Time to think about applying for a new passport for baby
• Wriggly babies and photo booths don't mix!
• 2 weeks to go...
• 3 days to go and still no passport

Time to think about applying for a new passport for baby

Whilst expecting my third baby we decided that a holiday abroad was probably best put on hold until the following year. Because of our decision I then put a lot of effort into choosing a lovely villa that both our family and our friends that we often holiday with would all enjoy. We found and booked a beautiful large villa in Portugal that would suit all 10 of us for the following year and started the countdown!

We were due to go at the end of May and so I had started thinking about checking our passports at the beginning of April. It became apparent that both myself and my eldest son needed renewals and Evie (our new addition) needed a new passport.

Now in hindsight at that point I should have hurriedly got together my passport application forms, photographs, cheque etc and gone along to the post office where they offer a check and send service. But having read on the website that passport turnaround was generally 3 weeks I filled in our passport applications online and waited to receive the forms.

Wriggly babies and photo booths don't mix!

Whilst awaiting our applications, I went along to a photo booth with my son and daughter and thought all three of us could have our photos taken, much easier said than done! After 10 or so attempts I eventually managed to get a reasonable picture of Oliver. As for Evie, it was completely useless! I tried to balance her on my lap whilst ducking out of the photograph, she spent her whole time trying to follow me with her gaze looking quite bemused by the entire event. I eventually realised this wasn't going to happen.

After a bit of research, I took her to a great place where I could lay her on a sheepskin and they happily snapped away, I finally had her photo! Admittedly, it was now coming up to the end of April so I was cutting it a bit fine but still just within the three weeks. I sent off all three passports together and hadn't really envisaged any problems.

How wrong I was….

A week later I received a letter back from the passport office stating that my cheque had not included the relevant fee to return the relevant documents (birth certificate etc). I received this letter on the Friday of Bank Holiday weekend and so didn't post the cheque back off until the following Tuesday.

2 weeks to go....

A few days later (with about two weeks to go) I called the passport office to ask how the applications were going. It was then that I realised that we may have a problem! They said they were in the queue but due to the delay in Evie's (and also Bank Holiday weekend) there was no guarantee we would get it back in time. They offered no reassurance and due to it being a first passport they said there was nothing we could do to speed it up.

We then started calling them every other day to begin with but by the time we got to the week of our holiday we were calling every day and sometimes two or three times! It all felt quite useless, no amount of pleading, begging and asking to speak to the Inspectors etc seemed to make any difference.

3 days to go and still no passports...

Each time we rang we offered to pay extra, travel to the passport office with or without Evie but to no avail. We even sent an email to Boris Johnson (our local MP) to plead with him to help us! At this point it was Wednesday and we were due to fly on the Saturday morning. After another pointless call that morning where we were told her passport had still not been inspected and they thought again that it was extremely unlikely we would receive it by Saturday we had virtually given up any hope.

We had looked into changing flights and missing a week of our holiday or me flying separately with Evie but I wasn't happy with either situation.

We decided we would try one more time that lunchtime. Unbelievably after days of being told 'you shouldn't have left it so late' and 'you should never book a holiday without a valid passport' we were told it had been inspected!

As it had been inspected someone finally took pity on us and allowed us to pay a fee to have it upgraded, signed off and couriered out to us. We were ecstatic! Evie's passport arrived the following day much to all of our relief and we all managed to board the plane for our long awaited holiday!

The moral of the story - make sure you apply for any new passports in plenty of time to avoid any unnecessary stress and disappointment!