I was about to put up an identical thread, and point people to the other thread you have updated.
And here was me feeling bad but your situation is even longer than mine. My passport was also sitting in the delivery office for 2 weeks. I had given them an overall three weeks and it was the last visa for me to get, and I already had an LOI pre-approved.
Unfortunately, the 'service' from the consular section can only be described as negligent in circumstances like this.
Of course others could say 'you should have checked your track and trace with the post office' - yes I could have checked it 7 days earlier but the long and short of it is that I have spoken to the embassy about 7 times this week, and have spoken to 4 different people. I was told by the two people they would go and collect it, and three times I was told this they didn't, and three times they never called me with an update as requested.
I ended up speaking to another department via the phone options and begging someone else to take ownership of this and making sure they went to collect my passport. I was told that Royal Mail would NOT give me the package (which I can understand for normal circumstances) regardless of it being my passport so it was all out of my control apart from constantly calling the embassy. No emails were acknowledged (I specifically asked them to confirm receipt) from three different embassy email addresses. Their fax was never picking up when I tried to fax them on many occassions.
Luckily today I've been told my visa is being processed and returned today, and I have the tracking number. I can only apologise to the Royal Mail for all my hits on their track 'n' trace website this week ;-) I had said I was flying on Monday (erm, that's a week earlier than reality!), and that the start of a 12-18 month trip would be affected if I never had my passport. I asked three different people if they understood the situation that it had to be returned that day (that message was delivered three days in a row) but it effectively made absolutely no difference to them.
I can't remember if this embassy offers an 'express' option for additional costs but it would have made no difference.
I cannot thank the person I spoke to a couple of times today for chasing it up and actually calling me back with an update when the passports had been collected. I just wanted to give the man a big hug (I think he was from foreign affairs).
Anyway, I'll stop waffling on and on now - you can probably tell it's been an emotional week. I can now kick back, delete things from my work computer, and walk out tomorrow night with a huge grin on my face as I hand in my pass, drive home, and go to the pub........
Edited by: budgettravelnotes
PS : I just checked my dates and realised that I too had posted my passport on a Wednesday so an attempted delivery was made on a Thursday..... although the recorded messages on the consular section say they are closed, the embassy was staffed (including the consul) today - a Thursday.
