UK Visa cannot be read by passport scanner

[pred02]

Hi,
I was issued a Tier 1 visa in Oct 2010. Since arriving to the UK on the page opposite the visa a couple of immigration officials (US, Colombia) placed their stamps which left a few smear marks on the UK visa.

Yesterday I was returning to Heathrow airport from a week long trip. The person at the customs control did not have difficulty scanning the front page of my passport, but he could not scan the visa. He then made me sit down for about 20 minutes until he double check everything.

Per his explanation, the visa had information about my fingerprints and they could not retrieve this information because of the smear marks on the visa.

I asked him if this would be the issue every time I come to the UK and he said probably as they now have a new procedure which requires all applications to scan their fingerprints to be validated against those that are on record with the visa.

It will be a great inconvenience to wait 20 minutes at passport control when returning to the UK; I travel quiet a lot to from the Uk and may be required also to do so for work.

Is there anything I can do to remedy this situation?

[motogod]

I had once read about a service where they issue a copy of an existing Visa if required by the applicant when a new passport is acquired so that the old passport need not be carried.

[arsenal49]

contact ukba. they can get u another visa if they r feeling generous because u have valid reasons to ask for duplicate visa ... never had this problem myself so cant speak from experience

regards