JCAP - hunting for a delayed passport after the ceremony

I'm now a freshly minted Brit, having applied back in January (JCAP, Camden Council) and attended the ceremony on 19th April (Barnet Council / Hendon Town Hall).

It's been 12 days since then, and I started to worry about my passport - first, most of the people seem to get them within 6-8 days, second and more important, I plan to travel on this Saturday 5th May and reeeeally wouldn't like to postpone it.

I have read the posts on the forum and have done the following:

- emailed and called HMPO a few times. Not very helpful answers, of the "call center drone" kind: "it hasn't been 20 working days yet, we are within our timelines", "your application is under examination". Finally I was able to squeeze out of them an acknowledgement of "we do not see in our system any record that you have attended the ceremony". Aha! This forum has several such stories...

- called UKVI on 0300 123 2253. Was told to write to citizenship.support@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk. From this forum I know that they take weeks to reply

- fired emails to citizenship.support@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk and NationalitySupportTeamFMT@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk with complete details of my situation

- called Barnet Council, listened to "there's one call ahead of you" muzak for 30 minutes, thought f it and showed up at the council myself. A very polite dude took my details, spoke to someone at the "back office", told me that they are certain they have notified UKVI about the ceremony, "we have the proof in our system" and "sometimes this just takes time you know".

So, what are my options at this point?

- I can cross my fingers and hope that someone acts upon my email to NationalitySupportTeamFMT

- I can call the HMPO tomorrow in the morning and try bamboozling them into doing the "urgent internal inquiry" thing as per british-citizenship/passport-not-receiv ... 44835.html

Anything else I'm missing?
The timing is quite tight
Any way to facilitate the passport delivery? (Since I'm in London, I can easily get to the HMPO office at Victoria).

I'm also considering going yolo, hoping that my passport arrives during the next week, having a friend to pick it up and have another friend bring it abroad, but that's obviously super risky.

(by going yolo I actually mean going for a travel and leaving the UK)

Hi,
Call DX delivery or contact them through their website chat and say you are expecting a delivery but don’t have the tracking number, they will ask for your postcode and give you the tracking number which you can track online. Good luck.

Are the passport really delivered by DX? I am sure for my BRP card because i have to sign for it.

but for my passport, it just appeared in my letterbox one day, no need to sign for.

Called the HMPO helpline in the morning.
First the regular bs about "up to 20 working days", but then the lady took interest, asked if I have any travel plans and said "the only thing I can do is to send an email to the examiner to look into it, please call later today around 5-7 pm".
Oh yes I will.

Meanwhile, got a reply to my email to FMT:

"Thank you for your e-mail. It may take in excess of 21 working days to be auctioned."

Umm that's an unexpected use of the word "auction"... I don't really understand what exactly they mean here.

Called HMPO a few more times, raised as much hell as possible. "Your case is being looked at".

Note: if they promise to "call you back", be aware that the timeline for the callback is "up to 24 hours". Sigh.

At least I made sure they have my number (which was not obvious from before, because they haven't ever sent me any messages).

So, they promised to call me back and failed.

"Summer is approaching, everybody on the processing team is extremely busy".

I don't really understand why HMPO has so many people answering phones if they do not actually have access to any information, but it appears to be the case.

Sigh.

Saga finally over, got my passport yesterday.

The only thing that helped was calling the council and convincing them to re-send the ceremony information. HMPO then contacted me about issuing the passport immediately.

Before that, calling HMPO by itself did NOT help. Apparently they are not able to contact UKVI about it.

Writing to citizenship.support@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk did NOT help. They have responded only after 9 days and just said "oh, we cannot pursue this until 20 working days have elapsed". So, they were entirely willing to waste several more weeks of my precious time instead of fixing their fault that would have taken less than a minute. I'm thinking about writing a formal complaint about that attitude.

rainman wrote: ↑

Tue May 15, 2018 1:05 pm

Saga finally over, got my passport yesterday.

The only thing that helped was calling the council and convincing them to re-send the ceremony information. HMPO then contacted me about issuing the passport immediately.

Before that, calling HMPO by itself did NOT help. Apparently they are not able to contact UKVI about it.

Writing to citizenship.support@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk did NOT help. They have responded only after 9 days and just said "oh, we cannot pursue this until 20 working days have elapsed". So, they were entirely willing to waste several more weeks of my precious time instead of fixing their fault that would have taken less than a minute. I'm thinking about writing a formal complaint about that attitude.

I think you should. The efficiency of their work is not high and just decaying.

rainman wrote: ↑

Tue May 15, 2018 1:05 pm

Saga finally over, got my passport yesterday.

The only thing that helped was calling the council and convincing them to re-send the ceremony information. HMPO then contacted me about issuing the passport immediately.

Before that, calling HMPO by itself did NOT help. Apparently they are not able to contact UKVI about it.

Writing to citizenship.support@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk did NOT help. They have responded only after 9 days and just said "oh, we cannot pursue this until 20 working days have elapsed". So, they were entirely willing to waste several more weeks of my precious time instead of fixing their fault that would have taken less than a minute. I'm thinking about writing a formal complaint about that attitude.

May I quick check how did you manage to travel without having the new passport? I guess you may have already sent back the BRP card so did you make your travel by the end?

I am in the similar situation so it would be great to hear your experience

Many thanks