Updates: Passport Office strike, Priority Pass cafe access in Berlin, Qatar insurance requirements

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• masaccio says:

  18 Mar18 March 09:17

  I got my new passport in 3 days. The extra few quid was worth the removal of any angst. Of course it helps that I am 30 minutes from a passport office. Appointment took about 5 minutes from arrival to walking out.

  I’d recommend the process for anyone needing a passport pretty soon. For me it was about having to choose a 2-week window between travel to get a new passport and a visa in that new passport. I ‘lost’ a few months validity, but the extra months would have been unusable in the EU anyway.

  • SammyJ says:

    18 Mar18 March 09:33

    I helped renew 2 child passports for a friend yesterday to try and couldn’t find any options to fast-track the process, the only up-sell was the passport with extra pages. How do you buy the expedited services?

    • masaccio says:

      18 Mar18 March 09:47

      Book an appointment: (https://www.gov.uk/get-a-passport-urgently/1-week-fast-track-service) and take along a paper form to the selected passport office along with photos and the old passport. You can use the online application to check photos, but I ended up just going to Tesco in the end as I just couldn’t get a photo anywhere close to being suitable. I also didn’t need to get a photo countersigned, but I have teacher friends so I did anyway just in case.

      The paper forms are only available at ‘proper’ post offices and not the corner shop style counters.

    • Rob says:

      18 Mar18 March 09:49

      Don’t think you can do this with child passports. We had this issue recently.

      Last time I renewed mine I did a ‘same day’ appointment at Victoria which was a result, especially as it is walkable for me. Slots for these are very limited though and you may end up, for example, having to fly to Belfast if they have slots when your local office does not.

      There was a twitter feed last year, automated, which sent out alerts when same day slots opened for booking.

      • masaccio says:

        18 Mar18 March 09:56

        From the website:

        You can use the 1 week Fast Track to:

        renew an adult or child passport that has expired or that is about to expire
        change personal details on your passport (for example your name, place of birth or gender)
        replace a lost, stolen or damaged passport
        apply for a first child passport

        Can’t comment on immediate appointments though. My urgency was about not being without my passport for too long so I had the luxury of booking 3 weeks in advance for the first appointment of the day. The appointments website is very clear about availability, but looks like Belfast or Glasgow may be the only options if you choose a child passport.

        • SammyJ says:

          19 Mar19 March 08:27

          Ah fair enough, I thought there was a priority option you could choose at checkout. I’m sure there used to be different options. Maybe not! Fingers crossed they don’t take ages, they don’t need them until August so without the strike it wouldn’t have been an issue at all.

• Save East Coast Rewards says:

  18 Mar18 March 12:55

  More slippery slope devaluations of Priority Pass. They’ve added a gym at Washington Baltimore airport to the PP list. However this gym is not accessible to anyone who received PP through a credit card, even if it’s one that still allows access to the bars and restaurants you need to have a PP card that you’ve paid for directly to use this benefit.

  So it seems there’ll be three tiers of PP in future:
  – Ones where you pay PP directly
  – Credit card ones that allow access to bar/restaurant experiences but not the gyms
  – Credit card ones (like Amex) that exclude the non-lounge benefits, except for a couple of legacy ones like LGW and BER.

  • AlexT says:

    18 Mar18 March 18:20

    BER is certainly not a legacy one. It must have been added earlier this year, because it definitely wasn’t on the PP list for AMEX in the Fall. The Movenpick Cafe specifically had a sign last summer that said that AMEX-linked PP cards are ineligible and cardholders need to contact the credit card provider if they have questions.

• Pb says:

  18 Mar18 March 13:40

  Did mine and my daughters a couple of weeks ago , standard service , took 9 days to have them both back .

• supergraeme says:

  18 Mar18 March 15:08

  It’ll be interesting to see how they keep functioning – it’s around a fifth of the workforce striking, I wonder if they’ll do less 7 day appointments etc?

  I was planning on doing a 7 day appointment at the start of April at the new office near LCY as I’m so strapped for time before June when I need a) a new passport and b) my old one with my US visa, so I’m hopeful they’ll still be running at least a reduced service.

• Skellig says:

  18 Mar18 March 17:34

  For anyone trying to get an in-person appointment at a passport office, I did this a couple of months ago. Availability of appointments does seem to vary ie sometimes there are none anywhere. You can use https://sken.io to monitor when any given website changes (eg when the passport office website changes from no appointments available to appointments available)

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