Australian passport delays: Sydney’s father Josh Davis said mistakes in application nearly stopped trip to Bali

A family’s wedding trip to Bali was almost completely derailed thanks to two minor mistakes on their passport application.

Josh Davis, a father of two from Sydney, has been a courier for 22 years and has seen some strange names with the mistake made on his daughter Sienna’s passport application when joining the group.

Davis said she filed passport renewals for her two sons on April 19, six months before they flew to Bali for an October wedding.

“I saw a little bit on Facebook about the delays due to everyone traveling so because I was worried I thought we’d be done with the kids now so we’re done,” she said. Yahoo News Australia.

Towards the end of August, Davis said she had only received an email about her son’s passport being processed, but nothing about her daughter.

When he called the Australian Passport Office (APO), he was told he had entered the wrong email on his daughter’s passport, a claim he disputed because he said his wife wrote it all down and “has very clear handwriting”.

When Mr. Davis’s son’s passport arrived, there was no trace of his daughter’s, so he called the Passport Office again.

When she asked where her daughter Sienna’s passport was, she was told: ‘That’s not the name I have here.’

Finally, on September 10, the passport office realized their mistake.

“It was spelled Siwnna, which is nothing like Sienna,” he said.

“But as I told my wife and friends, surely there has to be some kind of security check, you know someone does that, and then someone else criticizes it, considering it’s a pretty important document.

“Unless they’re busy and desperate and they’re just like, ‘Yeah, quick, pass it on, yeah, that’s good.'”

Passport delays have been at their highest since international borders reopened, with some citizens waiting more than three months, and some claiming they have had to wait up to six months.

To correct the mistake, Davis took the day off and stood in line for three hours to take her daughter’s documents to the passport office.

Again, she didn’t hear anything until a week later when she called the office again and was told the email was still wrong but she could go pick up her passport.

She was finally able to pick up her daughter’s passport on Tuesday, much to her relief.

Passport waiting times have caused huge headaches for Australians looking to travel abroad.

Delays have been at their highest since international borders reopened, with some citizens waiting more than three months, and some claiming up to six months, to obtain their first passport or renew their passport.

The Australian Passport Office has been working overtime to try to keep up with “unprecedented demand”.

More than 160,000 applications have been submitted in September alone, with longer delays for adults and children applying for their first passport due to additional security checks and supporting documents that need to be verified.

The APO has a $225 service for a passport to be processed with priority in two days, but those who can’t afford the fee have a long wait.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) said the Australian Passport Office has multiple checkpoints in the passport process to ensure all details are correct and verified before and after printing.

DFAT advised tourists to wait six weeks for their new passport in a statement released last week.

“APO strives to ensure that all passports issued are error-free through rigorous quality and assurance checks as part of the processing of applications,” a DFAT spokesperson told Yahoo News Australia.

“In a very small percentage of cases, when an error is detected, the APO engages directly with the customer and goes to great lengths to ensure the problem is fixed immediately.”