VERY URGENT ISSUE Faulty Indian Passport

[arsenal16]

I'm a british citizen by birth. Wife is indian passport holder with a spouse visa and a residence permit. Earlier this year she renewed her indian passport through HCI London and we received the new passport in March.

We applied for a schengan visa last week as she is travelling to Spain on 6th june for my sisters hen party. The agent we did the application through decided to use the german embassy as he said they are the easiest to obtain a schengan visa with.

To cut a long story short, 3 days ago i got a call from the german embassy from a really nice woman who told me they have approved the schengan visa application and have the visa ready to stamp into the passport but can't because there are issues with the indian passport. She said its faulty and is missing security features.

When we got the new passport in march, i noticed it felt really cheap and poor quality, but i didn't ever suspect that any embassy in the world could do such a pathetic thing such as issuing a faulty passport, its such an important document.

I am going to the german embassy to pick up the faulty passport (they said they will keep the application open so if i can get the issue resolved, i can just come back to the embassy and they will stamp the visa). I am then going to the hci with the faulty passport. Does anyone know if under the circumstances, as it is their error, they would issue a replacement passport before 6th june? i know normal applications take around 5 weeks, but in this instance, surely they have to accept its their mistake and as we need the passport before 6th of june, they have to sort it out?

[man4uni]

Sorry to hear that arsenal16 . In fact this is SHOCKING!!!

I would suggest you go to HCI London and explain them the issue and try to have a healthy conversation (reason I say this is bcoz it's completely unacceptable to issue a faulty passport, which can drive you nuts, at least me ), so keep calm and have a chat.

Most importantly, have you got anything in "writing" from German embassy about Indian passport being faulty ? If yes, that will be of much help!

If nothing works, ask to speak to higher authorities and submit your feedback here ... https://www.hcilondon.in/feedback.php

I am not sure if this helps...

[arsenal16]

Thanks for the reply, I am going to ask them for something in writing when I go there to pick up the faulty passport. I have emailed hci and they have said come in person, they have said if its there fault etc they will give me something stamped and official, but I don't know if that will be sufficient, I would rather have a replacement passport but they haven't told me if that's going to be possible or not yet. I am going on tues as Monday is bank hol. That leaves about 8 working days before I travel to Spain.

[arsenal16]

OK AN UPDATE:

Went to german embassy, the problem was the laminate on the pages of indian passport that had come off, went to indian embassy, they quickly re-laminated it, back to german embassy where they were happy with it and stamped the visa, so issue sorted!

however, we've just realised we don't have the residence permit, and we believe the german embassy forgot to give it back to us. in the even its lost however, does anyone know how quickly the home office can replace a lost residence permit, do they have a fast track procedure? also can she travel to spain with the schengan visa but no residence permit?

[z18runway]

yes she can travel out of UK without residence permit, but while coming back to Uk, she need to prove that she have UK residence permit to enter. what cant you go back to german embassy to obtain it