UK passport renewal

[Nong Khai Man]

On 5/12/2017 at 0:12 PM, gandalf12 said:

I did it April last year. Not the same as when the Embassy did them but was not a problem

Yes, That was a LOT Easier !!

[Nong Khai Man]

47 minutes ago, evadgib said:

My point was that resident applicants subject to 90 day reporting should be able to rely on their Thai DLs and photocopies of their passports for the duration of the renewal process instead of the thousand mile round trip to bkk. A two minute Skype/Wattsapp interview between HMPO in UK and applicants worldwide costs nothing and is entirely within HMGs grasp if necessary, including for proof of life pension ID verification periodically required by DWP/HMRC.

 

How easy would that be and why isn't it happening?

 

 

 

Perhaps Because THAT is too Easy.......

[MiKT]

4 hours ago, sjbrownderby said:

Trackable mail DOES come into it. Once again you are grossly misinformed. HMPO uses DHL to return your passport to the VFS office in Bangkok, and DHL inform you when your passport is in their trackable system. I received the first communication from DHL on April 9 after my April 3 submission of application. You can follow every stage of the delivery process through their website. Mine went from London, to East Midlands, to Leipzig, to Bangkok, to the local distribution centre, to delivery. The process from application to landing in Bangkok  took 9 days. It arrived in Bangkok on April 12 and for obvious reasons was not delivered to Trendy until April 18. Later on that day I received an email backed up with a phone call telling me that my passport was ready for collection. On receipt I found out that my passport had actually been issued on April 7. By any standards that is a very efficient process.

 You really need to stop spreading false information.

 And..............I have had no problems with immigration in the past so your assertion is incorrect. It may be that in the past you were able to present both passports at the border so they could see you had a valid visa. That is no longer the case. That is what I meant about rule changes. 

 The reason why they would not commit to an answer at the Trendy building is because they did not know. If you passport was still acceptable for travel after you applied for a new one then they would tell you so and the gov.uk website would also state that it was acceptable to use your old passport for cross-border travel. You seem to know better but ehn you knew better when you argued vehemently that you had to apply on line in order to get a new British passport. You also said that anyone who told you that you had to go to Bangkok to get a new passport was wrong. On those points you argued with several people, not just me. You can not put the genie back in the bottle so an apology did little to enhance your credibility. 

 

Oh god, you are so ……, trackable mail sent by someone else to a different address than yours clearly does not come into what has been discussed in the posts so far, because it’s not relevant here, you still have to pick-up your passport from Trendy.

 

 Of course if you apply from outside the UK from countries that don’t have a Trendy type service, (most) you can still apply for your passport on-line and you must send back your old passport (if you have any sense by trackable mail, but it’s not compulsory, you can send it any way you want) and they will return your old and new passports by trackable mail.

 

Clearly in these counties you can’t travel cross-border whilst you are not in possession of your passport and HMG state “You must consider the consequences of cancelling your current passport in your existing name and not having a valid document for a time”. Clearly this implies that in the case of Thailand and other Trendy countries, whilst waiting for your new passport back from Trendy your old passport still has validity, because it’s not physically cancelled until Trendy cut-the corner off.

 

From the content of your posts twittering on about “consequences” you actually implied that there are Thai immigration rule changes that might affect a person using an old (but un-cancelled passport) for cross border travel whilst waiting for the new one. But this is not the case, the only changes are that they have changed the method of issuing British passports from Thailand two times in the last few years, nothing whatsoever to do with Thai immigration.

 

You still can't understand simple logic. Other people have clearly stated that passports have been used for cross border travel whilst waiting for a new one, so it must be possible to do what I have been theorizing about.

 

You can renew your passport at any time. When you renew your passport, time left on your existing passport is added to your new one, up to a maximum of 9 months, so in a case like mine for instance, I still have 5 years validity left on my old passport, but nearly all the pages are full, so I can’t use it to go to say India where they put in a visa that takes up a whole page. But others may have different reasons for renewing and their old (but still valid) passport could be used to go in and out of Thailand as other posters have claimed has been done.

 

Also YOU must stop spreading false information, you stated “It may be that in the past you were able to present both passports at the border so they could see you had a valid visa. That is no longer the case. That is what I meant about rule changes”. 

 

But HMG still state “Send your previous passport with the visa attached to it with your application. Your previous passport will be returned to you….You’ll be able to use the visa if you carry both passports”.

 

Don’t apologize for your crass mistake; we would not want the unedifying spectacle of you trying to put the genie back into the bottle.

[sjbrownderby]

3 hours ago, MiKT said:

But HMG still state “Send your previous passport with the visa attached to it with your application. Your previous passport will be returned to you….You’ll be able to use the visa if you carry both passports”.

HMG is presumably 'Her Majesty's Government' which has no jurisdiction whatsoever over the whims and regulations governing immigration in Thailand. You can argue all you want at the border about what Her Majesty's Government says but when faced with 'real time on the ground' information from an immigration officer you have no choice but to comply. 

 You may be able to "to use the visa if you carry both passports” but if you have a multi-entry visa then this visa must be transferred to the new passport before you attempt to cross a border out of Thailand. You can not,  therefore, use two passports. Suddenly you have become an expert when not two months ago you were demonstrably incorrect in just about everything you claimed. 

[Bantex]

Sorry my friend but it is you who is misinformed. I agree that you do not go to the embassy for passport renewal. You now have to go to  another office which deals with passport applications and visas which is located at:

 UK Visa Application Centre
The Trendy Office Building,
28th Floor,
Sukhumvit Soi13,
Klongtoey-Nua,
Wattana,
Bangkok
10110,
Thailand

 

Once inside the Visa / Passport office on the 28th floor there is a photo booth, online access via computers with printers, black & white and colour photocopiers and forms can be translated on the ground floor.

Book an appointment and even if some of your paperwork is wrong they will let you go and get it corrected and return again without having to make a new appointment. I was told that my passport could take up to six weeks to be processed in the U.K. (depending on how busy they are) but my passport was back in 11 days.

Staff could not have been more helpful.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

[evadgib]

I give up. You lot are splitting more 'heirs' than the Tower & can frankly get on with it!

 

Why bother opening a thread if yer can't see the wood for the trees?

 

 

[MiKT]

1 hour ago, sjbrownderby said:

HMG is presumably 'Her Majesty's Government' which has no jurisdiction whatsoever over the whims and regulations governing immigration in Thailand. You can argue all you want at the border about what Her Majesty's Government says but when faced with 'real time on the ground' information from an immigration officer you have no choice but to comply. 

 You may be able to "to use the visa if you carry both passports” but if you have a multi-entry visa then this visa must be transferred to the new passport before you attempt to cross a border out of Thailand. You can not,  therefore, use two passports. Suddenly you have become an expert when not two months ago you were demonstrably incorrect in just about everything you claimed. 

It seems more likely that HMG's statement actually carries more weight than your uniformed opinions, because you still have such difficulty assimilating anything that does not accord with your erroneously fixed ideas.

 

For instance, somebody coming into Thailand with two passports (one with a valid Thai visa) will be let in and can go out again; after all thousands of tourists and business people arrive with two passports (the old one with a valid Thai visa) all the time. It does not only apply to UK passport holders.

 

It actually works the other way round as well, somebody with an older Thai passport with a UK visa has to carry both old and new passports when they go to the UK and the UK authorities don't insist that their visa is transferred to the new Thai passport, so it seems likely this is normal and accepted practice everywhere.

 

In fact the UK immigration are always pleased to see a Thai (especially a Thai woman as my wife and daughters have proved may times) with old and new passports, even if the current visa is in the new passport, they like to see the travel history. One of my very beautiful Thai daughters always insists on carrying 3 passports as she has been stopped and interrogated so often in the UK and also in Singapore for instance, the old passports are proof that she has never overstayed any of her visa's, which is what they are most worried about.

 

If you want to make categorical  statements about what Thai immigration will do, you must supply proof that they will not accept two passports, not just your opinions.

 

I may have hastily misread about renewing your UK passport from Thailand on-line before, but at least I had the good grace to immediately apologise, otherwise I think that my many, many years of dealing with Thai immigration (and many other countries) give me a better idea of what actually goes on than your uniformed drivel.

 

[MiKT]

Applied for my passport renewal at Trendy on the 3rd May and just received a phone text message from DHL, yes with a tracking number, but of no relevance as I also have an email  from HMPO to say that the new one has arrived at Trendy; and if it had not, it would be Trendies problem to track it not mine.

 

Anyway, that's a 13 day turn around, not bad at all.

 

Just looking at another thread and they are positive you can still carry two passports and immigration will just stamp your new passport on the way out, no need to transfer visa's. I will go to immigration and check for myself, as so much misinformation from those who claim to know about so-called "rule changes".

 

 

[Upnotover]

5 minutes ago, MiKT said:

Just looking at another thread and they are positive you can still carry two passports and immigration will just stamp your new passport on the way out, no need to transfer visa's. I will go to immigration and check for myself, as so much misinformation from those who claim to know about so-called "rule changes".

If you are on a visa then they will not transfer it, you do need to carry both old and new passports.  The first time you leave the country they will stamp your entry details into the new one but the visa itself stays where it is and will need to be shown on return.

 

If you are on an extension of stay however they do transfer your permission to stay stamp.

[Crossy]

Unless something has changed recently (if so a reference please).

 

VISAs (obtained from a consulate outside Thailand) cannot be transferred to a new passport, just carry both passports.

 

EXTENSIONS of Stay (obtained from immigration inside Thailand) should be transferred to the new passport. Get a Jumbo passport, they take up a whole page doing the transfer.

 

[OJAS]

On 5/13/2017 at 3:36 AM, MiKT said:

5 or six years ago, when they stopped issuing passports at the Embassy in Bangkok, you had to send it to HK by secure post/courier; they returned the old and new very quickly but if you had to travel out of Thailand then you had to get a special travel document from the Embassy.

 

Now all passports have to go via Trendy, so trackable mail (eg as used to send to HK) does not come into it any more, unless you are using a UK address, where your application can be dealt with and securely sent via the post office, but somebody needs to be in the UK to do that for you and then send it back here (presumably by trackable mail).

When I last renewed via HK a few years ago I did not have to send my old passport but only copies (and only of the photopage + pages containing visas & stamps to boot). AND I had my new passport couriered to me direct from the UK. I would have thought that broadly similar security, fraud, etc considerations applied then as now apply in apparent justification of the current requirement for 2 arduous (for those living in far-flung corners of LOS in particular) physical trips to the top floor of an office building with an exceedingly silly name somewhere in deepest darkest Bangkok.

 

On 5/13/2017 at 10:33 AM, sjbrownderby said:

Mine went from London, to East Midlands, to Leipzig, to Bangkok, to the local distribution centre, to delivery.

So much for "security", then, I think, if new passports travel such a pretty way from the UK to Bangkok as a matter of course!

[MiKT]

5 hours ago, Crossy said:

Unless something has changed recently (if so a reference please).

 

VISAs (obtained from a consulate outside Thailand) cannot be transferred to a new passport, just carry both passports.

 

EXTENSIONS of Stay (obtained from immigration inside Thailand) should be transferred to the new passport. Get a Jumbo passport, they take up a whole page doing the transfer.

 

 

Ta everso ta Crossy, just as I thought.

 

Yes I got a big one this time.

[MiKT]

4 hours ago, OJAS said:

When I last renewed via HK a few years ago I did not have to send my old passport but only copies (and only of the photopage + pages containing visas & stamps to boot). AND I had my new passport couriered to me direct from the UK. I would have thought that broadly similar security, fraud, etc considerations applied then as now apply in apparent justification of the current requirement for 2 arduous (for those living in far-flung corners of LOS in particular) physical trips to the top floor of an office building with an exceedingly silly name somewhere in deepest darkest Bangkok.

 

So much for "security", then, I think, if new passports travel such a pretty way from the UK to Bangkok as a matter of course!

Yes but the difference is, when you renewed via HK (which only happened for a relatively short period 5 or 6 years ago when the stopped issuing directly from the Bangkok Embassy and before they started doing it via Trendy) it was your responsibility to track the mail from the UK to your home address. Now it goes between Government departments so its their responsibility if it gets lost.

 

 

 

[sjbrownderby]

On 2017-5-13 at 2:34 PM, MiKT said:

For instance, somebody coming into Thailand with two passports (one with a valid Thai visa) will be let in and can go out again; after all thousands of tourists and business people arrive with two passports (the old one with a valid Thai visa) all the time. It does not only apply to UK passport holders.

Right but we were talking about passport applied for in Bangkok and picked up in Bangkok. I realise of course that a British passport holder may return to the UK to renew his/her passport. I was talking about the transfer of the stamp and departure card which were issued in the old passport, both of thise have to be transferred before you can use the new passport to cross the border out of Thailand......................and even though the old passport is no longer valid it is stamped to the effect that the stamp and departure card have been transferred to the new passport at which time you can then use the new passport to cross the border out of Thailand. 

 

On 2017-5-13 at 2:34 PM, MiKT said:

I may have hastily misread about renewing your UK passport from Thailand on-line before,

It was not that you misread about renewing a UK passport it was that you were completely wrong to the point of denying that UK passports now have to be applied for at the Trendy Office Building. Your assertion was that you had to apply on line and that anyone who said that you get a new UK passport in Bangkok was wrong..............................Turned out it was you who was wrong. 

 Now I am going to quote something to you from an email I received:

 

"Your current passport will be invalid on issue of your new UK passport. 
If you decide to travel against the advise of the GOV.UK website and experience problems, this is solely your decision"

 

This was extracted directly from an email received today from HMPO and makes it clear that when the new passport is issued then the current passport becomes invalid. As I said before you would not neccessarily know the date your new passport is issued but that date is marked clearly in the new passport and is not to be confused with the date on which you received your new passport. Did it ever occur to you why the gov.uk website tells you not to travel on a passport once you have applied for a new one? 

 

 

[sjbrownderby]

21 hours ago, OJAS said:

So much for "security", then, I think, if new passports travel such a pretty way from the UK to Bangkok as a matter of course!

It is because that is the way that DHL ships stuff from the UK to Thailand. East Midlands Airport is the UK hub for DHL and Leipzig is the European hub. Most stuff going into EMA within the UK goes by road and I can tell you that it is a very secure facility.  

Edited May 16, 2017 by sjbrownderby

[Anon999]

On 2017-5-11 at 10:06 AM, MiKT said:

Aha, Sherlock, the question is: "Is it legally wrong in Thailand to be using the old passport when you don't have the new one"?

 

If there is no world-wide database, why should they care and what would they charge you with? Your old passport would be the one which is in the Thai immigration database; and that cannot be updated until you present them with the new one to transfer your chops.

 

You can't really pop into immigration and say "Oh I have just applied for a new UK passport, please remove me from being legally resident in Thailand until I get the new one".

 

This is exactly why Trendy don't clip you old one until you get the new one; you can still legally use it "for identification purposes".............. so you use it to identify yourself to Thai immigration when you go in and out, until you get the new one. That's got to be legal.

 

What about people who have applied for a new passport say from Malaysia and then travel to Thailand for 3 months holiday using their old passport. Nobody will know or stop them entering or leaving Thailand, and when they get back to KL they will still be admitted as KL immigration won't know they have a new one waiting at the Malaysian equivalent of Trendy.

 

All theoretical I know, but how else can it work? Its not just in LOS, but also applies to any other country in the world; except perhaps those whose immigration might be directly linked to UK immigration (if there are any like that) Northern Ireland maybe, but then they would also know that you had been issued a new passport and were just using the old one "for identification purposes" so it would all be legal.

 

The British Passport office cannot stop people from travelling around the rest of the world, whilst they bugger about issuing you with a new passport. I don't even think they could stop you leaving and returning to the UK with your old passport.

 

Get Watson to mull over that for a while.

 

All very 555.

 

 

 

 

 

It was explicitly stated by the UK VFS that the old passport was only good for use as a form of ID and could not to be used for travel. That was on 26th April. My application was received in the UK (Newport) on 1st May with the new one issued on 3rd May it was received by VFS at 09:11 on Monday 8th May. Are you saying that until such time that it is collected you have two passports listed on the UK database as valid?

 

That raises the question that once the new one is signed to validate it and the old one has a corner clipped when is the old one cancelled on the UK database? As an aside I was asked by the VFS officer if I wanted the corner to be clipped!! Had I replied no then what, as it did not expire until February 2018. My guess is that had I used it to exit Thailand then arrival at LHR it would have been instantly picked up as CANCELLED.

Edited May 18, 2017 by Anon999
Minor errors

[MiKT]

24 minutes ago, Anon999 said:

It was explicitly stated by the UK VFS that the old passport was only good for use as a form of ID and could not to be used for travel. That was on 26th April. My application was received in the UK (Newport) on 1st May with the new one issued on 3rd May it was received by VFS at 09:11 on Monday 8th May. Are you saying that until such time that it is collected you have two passports listed on the UK database as valid?

 

That raises the question that once the new one is signed to validate it and the old one has a corner clipped when is the old one cancelled on the UK database? As an aside I was asked by the VFS officer if I wanted the corner to be clipped!! Had I replied no then what, as it did not expire until February 2018. My guess is that had I used it to exit Thailand then arrival at LHR it would have been instantly picked up as CANCELLED.

Dear   Annon999, please go back and read most of the above posts. All I have been doing is theorising about how you could actually use your old passport for travel in and out of Thailand (or any country) after you have applied for a new one, but before you actually pick-up the new one at Trendy (or receive it via trackable mail if you applied from most of the other countries that don't have Trendy equivalent offices.

 

Other posters have said this has been done before with no problem, but  sjbrownderby keeps erroneously  insisting that you will have trouble with the Thai immigration authorities and posting other erroneous information about transfer of visa's and stamps in your old passport.

 

Looking at the last 3 of my old passports that I have used in Thailand I can see that one of them (the first of the new red style) is stamped with the words "The holder previously travelled on passport no xxxxxx, dated xxxx, which bears a valid visa" but they most certainly did not stamp anything in the old blue one. My next two passports have the same wording in Thai only and again they never stamped anything in the old passports. In each case I had to carry both passports until I had a new visa and had no problem with immigration, there was no question of transferring visa's. (see also Crossy above).

 

According to the UK Government you should not use your old passport for travel after the new one has been issued, they say you can only use it for identification purposes, so yes if you used the old one to enter the UK it most certainly would be picked up as cancelled and you would have to explain that you were still using the old one whilst waiting for the new one. They might not be overjoyed, but they could not stop you entering the UK.

 

Remember most of these rules are intended to apply to people actually in the UK who will get their new passport very quickly, or to people before who were able to pick-up their passports from an embassy only one or two days after applying for it. They have not yet caught up with the Trendy type situation and in any event, they can't legally prevent you traveling, they only say you might have problems abroad and they take no responsibility if you do.

 

But this was not the issue being debated; the point I and others have made is that there is no world wide database for passports, so the Thai authorities (or those in any other country) won't know you have a new passport until you use it to enter or leave Thailand (for simplicities sake I will just discuss Thailand, but it applies to any other foreign (in the sense of foreign to the UK) country.

 

As this is the case, if, like yours and mine, the old passport is still valid date wise (mine is still valid for another five years but has run out of pages) there is no reason why you cannot continue to use it to go in and out of Thailand whilst waiting for your new one  (maybe one month as advertised, but in my recent case only 13 days) and Thai immigration will not care next time you go out with your new one and your old one (which will still have your valid visa in it), they will just stamp the normal exit stamp in your new passport, plus the chop saying you previously travel on passport xxx as I have noted above.

 

Its odd that Trendy did not clip your old passport as they have always done that in the past, but it does not really matter, when you turn up at Thai immigration you will still have your visa in the old passport and you have to carry both until such time as you get a new visa stamped in your new passport (this is clearly stated in the UK Government website and happens everywhere, my wife had to carry two Thai passports for years to go to the UK as she had a 10 year visa ).

 

sjbrownderby insists that Thai immigration now say that you have to have your visa transferred to your new passport before they will let you out, but this is clearly nonsensical as many people will arrive with two passports, the older one with a visa and they can't make everybody do that before they let them out, it would cause chaos at immigration with people missing flights; and anyway they don't issue visa's in Thailand, so I am sure that's bs.

 

He also says that you will have trouble at immigration if they see you have used your old passport to go in and out whilst waiting for your new one, but this is clearly rubbish, all they care about is stamping your new passport to the effect that you have a valid visa in your old one as described above, they are hardly going to stop you going out again and since they don't issue visa's in Thailand the idea of the circulating all embassies around the world with the fact that you used your old passport whilst waiting for your new one is simply utterly risible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

[BritTim]

5 hours ago, Anon999 said:

Are you saying that until such time that it is collected you have two passports listed on the UK database as valid?

In the UK database, the old passport is marked as invalid for travel soon after the application is received. As a practical matter, you could use it for regional travel. If the UK became aware that you had, you would probably have a big problem. I think the main reason the UK does not want you to use the old passport for travel, after copying all the pages in it, is because the UK authorities want to know everything entered into the old passport. Whatever the reason, the passport is officially canceled.

 

If you do use it for regional travel, and either lose it while outside Thailand, or are arrested for some unrelated reason, the local consulate will become aware of your status, as will the country you are stuck in. You might well be charged with illegal entry into the country. Very likely, once that issue is resolved, the UK authorities will insist on selling you an emergency travel document valid only for return to the UK.

 

Summary: if you use the old passport for travel, you will probably get away with it, but be very careful. The consequences could be severe if the authorities become aware that you are using a canceled passport for travel purposes.

[Mattd]

5 hours ago, BritTim said:

In the UK database, the old passport is marked as invalid for travel soon after the application is received.

Just to be 100% clear on this, the original passport is cancelled within the UK database only once the new passport has been authorised (so issued by definition) and not before.

This from the guidance document on cancellation of a British Passport issued by the Government:

Where an application for a replacement passport is submitted, or the accompanying passport is still valid (e.g. because it is full), the document should be cancelled and a note made on the system (see also Passports containing visas, below).

Cancellation should be done when the new issue is authorised and not before. 

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/118594/cancellation-of-passports.pdf

 

The UK has two databases for passports, one is with IPS and the other is a database used for LSR (Lost, Stolen, Recovered)

The IPS database can only be accessed by IPS and UK Border Control, it is not shared outside of the UK, the LSR database can be accessed by overseas British embassies etc.

 

Therefore it would be reasonable to assume that the original passport is still valid from the point of application to the point that the new passport is issued, of course the issue would be knowing the date of issue!

 

Thai immigration do NOT transfer valid visas to a new passport, they will only transfer an extension of stay, re-entry permit etc. they will make a note of the change of passport in the first pages which will include the old passport number, original visa details and date of arrival on that visa.

[YetAnother]

makes my usa passport acquisition process seem trivial; consulate/embassy in chiang mai

[BritTim]

1 hour ago, Mattd said:

Therefore it would be reasonable to assume that the original passport is still valid from the point of application to the point that the new passport is issued, of course the issue would be knowing the date of issue!

 

I think a  reasonably reliable guide on when the old passport has been canceled is that it will occur at about the same time your credit card is charged for the new passport.  I do not think it is completely safe to use the old passport for travel before that, though. If you apply from most other countries, you must send in your old passport with the application (which is later returned to you canceled). The UK authorities, while allowing you to retain the passport for identification purposes when applying from Thailand, make clear that they do not regard it as a valid travel document once the application for renewal has been made.

 

If the passport office contacted you to inform you of an issue with your application, and you had an urgent need to travel, you could ask them whether you could use the old passport while the issue was ironed out. If they said "yes", this would cover you against potential issues. Otherwise, it would be risky.

[MiKT]

16 hours ago, MiKT said:

Dear   Annon999, please go back and read most of the above posts. All I have been doing is theorising about how you could actually use your old passport for travel in and out of Thailand (or any country) after you have applied for a new one, but before you actually pick-up the new one at Trendy (or receive it via trackable mail if you applied from most of the other countries that don't have Trendy equivalent offices.

 

Other posters have said this has been done before with no problem, but  sjbrownderby keeps erroneously  insisting that you will have trouble with the Thai immigration authorities and posting other erroneous information about transfer of visa's and stamps in your old passport.

 

Looking at the last 3 of my old passports that I have used in Thailand I can see that one of them (the first of the new red style) is stamped with the words "The holder previously travelled on passport no xxxxxx, dated xxxx, which bears a valid visa" but they most certainly did not stamp anything in the old blue one. My next two passports have the same wording in Thai only and again they never stamped anything in the old passports. In each case I had to carry both passports until I had a new visa and had no problem with immigration, there was no question of transferring visa's. (see also Crossy above).

 

According to the UK Government you should not use your old passport for travel after the new one has been issued, they say you can only use it for identification purposes, so yes if you used the old one to enter the UK it most certainly would be picked up as cancelled and you would have to explain that you were still using the old one whilst waiting for the new one. They might not be overjoyed, but they could not stop you entering the UK.

 

Remember most of these rules are intended to apply to people actually in the UK who will get their new passport very quickly, or to people before who were able to pick-up their passports from an embassy only one or two days after applying for it. They have not yet caught up with the Trendy type situation and in any event, they can't legally prevent you traveling, they only say you might have problems abroad and they take no responsibility if you do.

 

But this was not the issue being debated; the point I and others have made is that there is no world wide database for passports, so the Thai authorities (or those in any other country) won't know you have a new passport until you use it to enter or leave Thailand (for simplicities sake I will just discuss Thailand, but it applies to any other foreign (in the sense of foreign to the UK) country.

 

As this is the case, if, like yours and mine, the old passport is still valid date wise (mine is still valid for another five years but has run out of pages) there is no reason why you cannot continue to use it to go in and out of Thailand whilst waiting for your new one  (maybe one month as advertised, but in my recent case only 13 days) and Thai immigration will not care next time you go out with your new one and your old one (which will still have your valid visa in it), they will just stamp the normal exit stamp in your new passport, plus the chop saying you previously travel on passport xxx as I have noted above.

 

Its odd that Trendy did not clip your old passport as they have always done that in the past, but it does not really matter, when you turn up at Thai immigration you will still have your visa in the old passport and you have to carry both until such time as you get a new visa stamped in your new passport (this is clearly stated in the UK Government website and happens everywhere, my wife had to carry two Thai passports for years to go to the UK as she had a 10 year visa ).

 

sjbrownderby insists that Thai immigration now say that you have to have your visa transferred to your new passport before they will let you out, but this is clearly nonsensical as many people will arrive with two passports, the older one with a visa and they can't make everybody do that before they let them out, it would cause chaos at immigration with people missing flights; and anyway they don't issue visa's in Thailand, so I am sure that's bs.

 

He also says that you will have trouble at immigration if they see you have used your old passport to go in and out whilst waiting for your new one, but this is clearly rubbish, all they care about is stamping your new passport to the effect that you have a valid visa in your old one as described above, they are hardly going to stop you going out again and since they don't issue visa's in Thailand the idea of the circulating all embassies around the world with the fact that you used your old passport whilst waiting for your new one is simply utterly risible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

Just to be clearer, they do update  some classes of visa within Thailand., eg a Non Res B when you have a work permit, Retirement, Non Res O if you can prove you have the requisite amount of cash or monthly income, etc. But the first time you have to get a visa from outside the country. However, this does not change my point; when you go to renew, they will just stamp your new passport as noted above and won't care if you have used it whilst waiting for a new one.

 

Of course if you did use it for an extended time while you waited for a new one whilst still residing in Thailand they might wonder why, but  I don't see them doing anything drastic about it as long as your old one was still valid inside the Thai database. Presumably you would have a very good reason to ignore the UK Government warnings and still travel at this time; maybe you desperately needed to visit your mianoi or take your gik on holiday to Laos, which would be standard Government practice here and fully understandable.

 

I can hardy see them looking at your two passports and saying, "oh dear Thailand's database is out of date, we must update it to line up with the UK issue date in your new passport",  that would be a very bad loss of face and they would have to send the border staff who let you out and back in again to inactive posts.

 

Just to be even clearer, of course if you were renewing a Non-Res B, etc., they would put the new visa in your new passport and after that you would not need to carry two passports, same if you renew your Non Res O type visa in a consulate in another country. I say renew, but they actually issue you with a new visa, not renew the old one.

 

Its not really a complicated issue, and I am sure not many people would actually do this, although it has been done. I was just making a theoretical point, that it could be done and the Thai immigration authorities would be very unlikely to penalise you if you actually did it.

 

There are very few countries with a Trendy type office and in a few of the others you would indeed be foolish to travel with your old passport whilst waiting for the new, but in most countries the would not care when you turned up to go out again with your new and old passports or to renew/update your visa. Certainly they won't care if you had arranged to pick up your new passport outside of the country you were residing in and were coming back in with your old and new passports, even if you had exited at a time past the UK issue date on the new passport.

Edited May 19, 2017 by MiKT

[sanemax]

5 hours ago, BritTim said:

I think a  reasonably reliable guide on when the old passport has been canceled is that it will occur at about the same time your credit card is charged for the new passport.

No, the old PP is cancelled when the corner is cut off , that is the cancellation process, cut the corner off , which makes the PP invalid , until that time, the PP is still valid

[MiKT]

8 minutes ago, sanemax said:

No, the old PP is cancelled when the corner is cut off , that is the cancellation process, cut the corner off , which makes the PP invalid , until that time, the PP is still valid

 

Always was the way in the past, I have good collection of clipped corner passports, but its curious that Anon999 says that Trendy asked if she wanted her old passport clipped when she picked up her new one. She did not make it clear if she declined, but in fact it would not matter, who would know if she used her old passport to go somewhere else and then went to say the UK and used her new passport to enter the UK, they would still let her in even though it did not contain an exit stamp from another country. But why would you do that if you already had your new passport? She would of course need to present both old an new on getting back to Thailand, assuming she has her Thai visa in the old one. 

 

I can think up bizarre scenario's like for instance where you went out with your old passport to see a specialist doctor in another country, had to stay in hospital and arranged for someone to pick-up your new passport at Trendy and send/bring it to you in the other country; and you then used you new passport to come back or go somewhere else, but you would still have both passports so again I don't see a problem even if the old one was not clipped.

 

But think that the first time you went to a Thai immigration post they might clip your old one. Maybe Anon999 can clarify if that happened to her.

 

In fact I think I will try this myself when I pick up my new passport at Trendy next week and decline if they ask me if I wanted it clipped and then use it with the new one next month to go out as planned.............assuming best laid etc.

 

 

[sanemax]

41 minutes ago, MiKT said:

but its curious that Anon999 says that Trendy asked if she wanted her old passport clipped when she picked up her new one. She did not make it clear if she declined, but in fact it would not matter, who would know if she used her old passport to go somewhere else and then went

 

having also got a new PP at Trendy , although they did ask permission, written permission from me to allow them to deface my PP , by way of cutting a corner off .

   It was really just a formality, because if I didnt give them written permission, they wouldnt give me my new PP

    

[MiKT]

3 minutes ago, sanemax said:

 

having also got a new PP at Trendy , although they did ask permission, written permission from me to allow them to deface my PP , by way of cutting a corner off .

   It was really just a formality, because if I didnt give them written permission, they wouldnt give me my new PP

    

5555555555555

[sjbrownderby]

19 hours ago, MiKT said:

sjbrownderby insists that Thai immigration now say that you have to have your visa transferred to your new passport before they will let you out, but this is clearly nonsensical as many people will arrive with two passports, the older one with a visa and they can't make everybody do that before they let them out, it would cause chaos at immigration with people missing flights; and anyway they don't issue visa's in Thailand, so I am sure that's bs.

There is a form for transfer of stamps from old to new passport and it has to be done at an immigration office and not at the border. You are getting a little confused, and not for the first time. Leaving is not the same as arriving and I am fully aware that someone may arrive with two passports if the newer passport was issued in another place. I am talking specifically about attempting to leave the country after you have received you new passport and when the visa and stamp with departure card are in the old passport. There has to be some kind of continuity, the old passport is cancelled when you receive the new one and you will also receive a letter form the British Embassy asking Thai Immigration to transfer the stamps to the new passport. You can not leave the country on a passport which to all intents and purposes is no longer valid because that is what you are asking to do.  I had to go through that on my way to Laos a few weeks ago and the transfer had to be completed before I could leave Thailand. I am not making it up so therefore it is not bs as you seem to think. 

[sanemax]

3 minutes ago, sjbrownderby said:

I am talking specifically about attempting to leave the country after you have received you new passport and when the visa and stamp with departure card are in the old passport. There has to be some kind of continuity, the old passport is cancelled when you receive the new one and you will also receive a letter form the British Embassy asking Thai Immigration to transfer the stamps to the new passport. You can not leave the country on a passport which to all intents and purposes is no longer valid because that is what you are asking to do.  I had to go through that on my way to Laos a few weeks ago and the transfer had to be completed before I could leave Thailand. I am not making it up so therefore it is not bs as you seem to think. 

If you leave Thailand on a visa which is about to expire and you will not be coming back in on that visa and you are leaving on a old recently cancelled PP, you can make the transfer from one PP to the other at immigration at the border , on the way out , no need to go to an internal IO

[sjbrownderby]

10 hours ago, Mattd said:

Therefore it would be reasonable to assume that the original passport is still valid from the point of application to the point that the new passport is issued, of course the issue would be knowing the date of issue!

My application was submitted on April 3rd. Issue date on the new passport was April 7th. I was not aware of the issue date until I received the new passport on April 26th. According to HMPO the old passport becomes invalid as a legal travel document when the new one is issued, in  my case that was 4 days after application. 

 Just for your information IPS became HMPO when the government officially scrapped plans for a national ID card in the UK and lost it's status as an executive agency, becoming part of the Home Office.

[Moonlover]

8 hours ago, BritTim said:

Therefore it would be reasonable to assume that the original passport is still valid from the point of application to the point that the new passport is issued, of course the issue would be knowing the date of issue!

 

 

2 hours ago, sanemax said:

No, the old PP is cancelled when the corner is cut off , that is the cancellation process, cut the corner off , which makes the PP invalid , until that time, the PP is still valid

I beg to differ on this assumption. Below is a line copied directly from the Gov.uk website regarding P/P renewal:

 

''You can’t travel with it after you’ve applied for a new one - but you will be able to keep your existing passport for ID purposes''.

 

Check it for yourselves at: https://www.gov.uk/overseas-passports and follow the links.