Lost documents by Royal Mail

Hi guys,

I am applying for my first irish passport and sent the required documents with Royal Mail over to ireland with international tracked and signed. There has been no update from Royal Mail in over a month and I am now certain that the package has been lost. Is anyone else in a similar position? How do I even go about replacing my british passport, birth certificate and FBR certificate??

A month in Royal Mail is well within the normal timeframe. They are simply that bad. Never have I ever seen a postal service as slow as them.

There are numerous people here who had mentioned their documents were held up by Royal Mail for over 20 days. Last year I sent around 20 parcels to the UK and they were handled by Royal Mail in the UK part. I would say 50% of the time they don’t get delivered until 4-5 weeks later (and one parcel did indeed end up being lost).

If you truly believe it is lost, there is no other workaround. You will have to go to the police station, report them as lost, and then apply to relevant authorities to get replacement documents one by one. Unless you insured your documents for specific values, you would have to pay for them by yourself. But as I said, one month is within normal timeframe for Royal Mail. I would wait for another month before taking any action.

Hi,

Successfully got FBR entry Jan 2023. Now applying for first Irish passport. Posted all my docs, UK passport, FBR Certificate, Birth Certificate via Royal Mail 8th Feb.

According to tracking it's still at my local distribution centre. Sick to the stomach as there will be so much work to get new copies of these documents, let alone the costs and i'm due to go on Holiday in August.

I will absolutely, never , ever use Royal Mail again.

Their customer service is beyond a joke, from their point of view, in 2 days time its classed as lost. Great.

jrmurray993 wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 04, 2023 12:59 pm

Hi,

Successfully got FBR entry Jan 2023. Now applying for first Irish passport. Posted all my docs, UK passport, FBR Certificate, Birth Certificate via Royal Mail 8th Feb.

According to tracking it's still at my local distribution centre. Sick to the stomach as there will be so much work to get new copies of these documents, let alone the costs and i'm due to go on Holiday in August.

I will absolutely, never , ever use Royal Mail again.

Their customer service is beyond a joke, from their point of view, in 2 days time its classed as lost. Great.

Sent mine off too. Tracking says its still in the local depot but according to a relative of mine who works with Royal Mail its actually currently down in London. It seems they don't even bother updating the traffic.

jrmurray993 wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 04, 2023 12:59 pm

Hi,

Successfully got FBR entry Jan 2023. Now applying for first Irish passport. Posted all my docs, UK passport, FBR Certificate, Birth Certificate via Royal Mail 8th Feb.

According to tracking it's still at my local distribution centre. Sick to the stomach as there will be so much work to get new copies of these documents, let alone the costs and i'm due to go on Holiday in August.

I will absolutely, never , ever use Royal Mail again.

Their customer service is beyond a joke, from their point of view, in 2 days time its classed as lost. Great.

I sent mine on the same day. Its got to MK on the 9th and not moved. The pallet with all the letters on must be lost somewhere. I have seriously lost all hope

Unless you have imminent travel plans, I would advise that you wait for another month. Once you go to the police station and report your documents as lost, there is no way back. Even if your documents do arrive in the end, they won’t be valid documents.

As I said, I have at least 10 parcels last year that took more than a month to reach its final destination by Royal Mail. It has been as bad as this since at least 6 months ago and it’s not getting better. I don’t know what’s going on with them honestly.

Lots of people are in that position. Put your details in here - I got an update despite nothing shown on RM tracking (or any other tracking website).

https://notifications.royalmail.com/nf-rest/

littlerr wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 05, 2023 10:06 pm

Unless you have imminent travel plans, I would advise that you wait for another month. Once you go to the police station and report your documents as lost, there is no way back. Even if your documents do arrive in the end, they won’t be valid documents.

As I said, I have at least 10 parcels last year that took more than a month to reach its final destination by Royal Mail. It has been as bad as this since at least 6 months ago and it’s not getting better. I don’t know what’s going on with them honestly.

The mail arrived today. Thankyou for your words of encouragement. In future is there another alternative to royal mail that you could suggest?

Great news that your documents have arrived.
I have always tried to avoid using three where possible. UPS for example isn’t a lot more expensive for my usual routes between Ireland and the UK.

I do understand that in certain cases (like the passport application) UPS may not accept PO Box destinations. In these cases, you can contact the passport office to give you a non-PO Box address instead. Not always going to work but at least worth a try.

For those of you having problems with Royal Mail, have you tried putting your tracking number into the Irish An Post tracking portal? My passport application took a week to arrive in Dublin and during that time, there were no updates on the Royal Mail tracking page. Five days after posting, I started looking at An Post and then after 7 days, it showed up. I posted my application around 20th Feb, I think.

Hi, I was in the same situation, posted my documents on the 7th February from the north of Scotland, they then sat down in Northampton depot. Phoned the helpline 3 times with little help other than I could claim after a certain time. Went on their twitter account to ask for help, just got the same about claim forms. On the 8th March AN Post now had them and on 9th March the Irish passport office got them. Very stressful after waiting so long to get the citizenship, to think all documents have been lost. Hopefully the passport application and document return will be straightforward, good luck to all with this final phase.

Had to send a few more docs and have chosen to go with UPS. Got an awful feeling it will go tits up though cos of the whole PO box thing. Will keep everyone updated.