You're right. It helps getting to the border in the first place. My wife is a non-visa national.

But it is really not much arguing at the border. Instead they disappeared quickly into their back-office.

Slightly delayed but better than never: We requested my wife's passport back (by plain e-mail) on the 20th of November - 30 days before our flights on the 20th of December. We didn't receive it within the 10 days and so we called the UKBA. They told us the passport had not been sent and we should wa...

Me and my wife we have travelled 3 times out and back into the UK with an expired family permit. Two of those times we even re-entered with an expired EEA family permit, no CoA AND a refused EEA 2 application (lack of comprehensive health insurance). Even so we were always re-admitted. 1. The first ...

Good news,

we just received the residence card for my wife. We have the WPA XS private health insurance with the 1500GBP excess. It does the trick.

Best of luck!

I had a non-UK EHIC and I included a letter explaining that I was in the UK for the duration of my studies. Still, it was rejected.

The fact that we didn't get the CoA implied that they didn't consider the application to be complete, I suppose.

Hey there! We had our application rejected, because the UKBA did not accept my European EHIC insurance as sufficient evidence of comprehensive sickness insurance. We re-applied with a private health insurance from WPA (the one with the 1500GBP excess), which covers both for the same price in the fir...