Australian passport delays: Sydney dad Josh Davis said errors on application almost halted Bali trip

A family’s honeymoon to Bali has been almost completely derailed thanks to two minor mistakes in their passport application.

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

Mr Davis said he filed a passport extension for his two children on April 19, six months before they were due to fly to Bali for a wedding in October.

“I saw something on Facebook about delays because everyone was traveling, so because I was worried, I thought we’d get the kids ready now, so we’re done with,” he said. Yahoo News Australia.

By the end of August, Mr. Davis said he had only received one email about his son’s passport processing, but nothing about his daughter.

When he called the Australian Passport Office (APO), he was told he had entered the email incorrectly in his daughter’s passport, a claim he disputed because he said his wife wrote everything down and “she writes very correctly’.

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

When he asked where his daughter Sienna’s passport was, he was told: ‘That’s not my name here’.

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

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

“But like I said to my wife and friends, there has to be some sort of security check, you know someone does that, and then someone else checks it off because it’s a pretty important document.

“Unless they’re busy and desperate and just go, ‘Yeah, scroll quickly, yeah that’s fine.'”

Passport delays are at an all-time high since the reopening of international borders, with some citizens having to wait more than three months and some claiming they had to wait up to six months

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

Again he had heard nothing until he called the office again a week later where he was told that the email was still incorrect but that he could come and collect the passport.

To his relief, he was finally able to pick up his daughter’s passport on Tuesday.

Passport wait times have been a huge headache for Aussies who want to travel abroad.

Delays have been unprecedented since the reopening of international borders, with some citizens waiting more than three months, and some even claiming six months, to get their first passport or have their passport renewed.

The Australian Passport Office has been working overtime trying to keep up with the ‘unprecedented demand’.

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

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

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 checked before and after printing.

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

“APO strives to ensure that every passport issued is error-free through rigorous quality and assurance checks as part of application processing,” a DFAT spokesperson told Yahoo News Australia.

“In a very small percentage of cases where an error is discovered, the APO will contact the customer directly and make every effort to ensure that the problem is resolved quickly.”