Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Don't take my lost passport to the passport office!

Now I've reported my passport as stolen and applied for a new one, the passport office will destroy my old passport. Nobody can use it anyway, because the number has been reported as a lost or stolen passport. My new (British) passport will have a new passport number.

The passport offices will not even bother to tell me that my passport has been found, so I'll have no reassurance that a kind person tried to return it, nor the reassurance that nobody attempted to sell it or use it. I'll have no way of contacting whoever handed it in to thank them. No way of finding out if they have other items of my property.

The UK application office assured me they had no need to tell me if my passport was found, because I had no need to worry, nobody else could use it. So what would be the point of returning it to them?

So if you find my passport, please try to find me on the internet. I'd love to have my passport back, with my photo, and the records of all my journeys.

What if I were to mislay my passport at home, and find it later, after reporting it missing? That happened to me once, when I thought leaving it in my suitcase would guarantee that I would not travel without it. Unfortunately, I had more than one suitcase, and unable to find my missing passport, did not even start to pack.

On a second occasion, I bought a fancy silver cover, which hid the passport so that it looked like a notebook. Eventually I found the missing passport.

In such a case when you have found your own passport at home, or when you apply for a new one, they can cut of the corner.

Why can't they simply cut the serial number off a passport which was found by somebody else?

My advice to you - photocopy every page of your passport in colour before every trip (even to the bank asking for it as proof of identity. When I get my new passport I am thinking of placing inside my passport the address of a friend or relative to contact, warning a finder not to return the passport to any official body but to me direct, and notice that I will pay a reward.

What do you think?

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