[Anonymous]

Can anyone explain to me why it costs more than 3 times as much to renew my 6 year olds British passport living in Spain as it would if we lived in the UK!

From the UK this would be 46 quid, through Madrid (as is law) it is going to cost us 181 euros (170 and 11 for the compulsory courier!) or 140 quid! I know they have to deal with the application by hand, rather than by scanning it but really, do they get the Queen herself to do this task! To make it worse hubbies is also due and mine needs renewing in August so thats about a months salary!

Anyone any idea who I should raise this with, the local consulate seems less than helpful! I feel the need for a strongly worded letter!!

An about to be slightly poorer,
Heather

[Anonymous]

Is it not possible to ask a friend/relative to post you out the renewal application form for your daughter’s new passport, obtainable from any UK post office.
Complete the forms, and return (with your daughter’s old passport) by registered post to this helpful friend/relative who can either hand it to their post office (as long as it’s a main one as against a sub-post office) where I believe they check the forms and forward the application on to the passport office. Or your friends can post your application directly to Passport Office, giving their UK address for the renewed passport to be sent to (if you don’t have an address anymore in UK), and they can ‘register’ it out to you.

Has to be better than handing over all that extra money.

“Can anyone explain to me why it costs more than 3 times as much to renew my 6 year olds British passport living in Spain as it would if we lived in the UK!”
Yes I can. It’s called a scam, just to cream extra money by any means from the British people….after all, they have to get money to pay for all those cocktail parties that overseas consulates hold somehow.

[Anonymous]

Heather,

You can’t escape rip off Britain, even when you move abroad.

I know it is a shameless rip off because I have a very good benchmark to prove it.

The other day I had to renew my British and Swiss passports. Compare and contrast.

To renew my Swiss passport I went to the Swiss consulate in Barcelona, handed over my old passport, signed a form, paid 90 Euros, and a week later I received my new Swiss passport by registered post. They also threw in a Swiss ID card, thank God, as I will be able to use that as ID when my Spanish residencia card expires.

To renew my British passport I had to download various long and tedious documents from the home office website. After filling in said tedious forms I then had to find someone of ‘good standing’ to certify my passport photos. I then had to post it all to Madrid, paying 180 Euros, or something like that, and about a month later my new passport arrived.

So renewing a British passport is much more hassle, takes twice as long, and costs twice as much. No surprises there then.

Mark

[Anonymous]

We are just glad that our newest arrival, Meghan, was born here and so qualifies for a Spanish passport…a whole 17 euros I believe!!

Its the same as with the ID cards, I am sure they will be a squillion pounds in the UK when introduced and are about 10 euros here…why should you have to pay through the nose for something that half the Uk population don´t want anyway?

We could get a friend to send out passport form etc but legally as we live here we have to renew the passports through Madrid, as Mark has done. I did try and get my parents to post from the UK but my Dads a worrier and kept coming up with every possible thing that he could think of that could go wrong!!

Mark, do you want to join us in a strongly worded letter to someone, somewhere..maybe you have a new angle for your newspaper articles!!

Heather

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