UK ETA

Alright, I tried again. Instead of repeatedly taking photos of our passports (waiting for the app to tell me if the photo met its requirements), I decided to “use this photo” since it looked as clear as possible. Turns out that was the right call because my ETA was approved by the time I finished my husband’s! So, I’ve amended my review. If you’re getting frustrated with taking a photo of your passport because it keeps telling you that it doesn’t meet the requirements, just make sure the text is clear, four edges are visible, and minimize the glare and reflection as much as possible. It lists these things when it asks if you’re sure you want to submit. And then just submit. If you’re completing more than one ETA (eg, for someone else), know that you will have to complete one at a time. There’s no “add a person” feature so expect to check out and pay for each application before moving on to the next one. Previous review: I’ve spent 45 minutes just trying to take ONE satisfactory photo of my passport. Extremely annoying that you can’t upload a scanned copy or a photo and then get it approved. It’s also very annoying that there is no “back button” in case you select something by accident. There is no choice but to exit the app and start over again!

I applied last night I had all sorts of trouble getting the chip to read. I tried for several minutes every which way to no avail. My wife applied several days before me, and she had similar issues. I asked her what her trick was, and she said just skip. She had done that and didn’t have any issues getting approved pretty quickly. So I followed her advice, and just skipped, and went through the rest of the process. Everything went through just fine, and I ended up being approved within a minute. I hadn’t even gotten my credit card back in my wallet before I got the approval email. That part was quick and over all the whole process was simple and straightforward overall. (And I even got approved more quickly than she did). Fix the chip reading part of this app, and it gets at least four stars. Looking forward to my trip to the UK in the upcoming months!

We’ve done three passports in a row and despite positioning them the same way for each separate process, it took different times to read the chips and these are passports from the same nationality (presumably the chip is located in the same place) and the same phone was used. For first passport took three tries, the second took about 10, the second took maybe 30 tries and needed to shut down the app once in the midst of it to restart the process from the start. Every time too it failed to read the chip the message would be that the phone or passport were moved even though that wasn’t the case for 99% of the attempts. So this app is in dire need of fixing how it reads the biometric chip as it was a frustrating process. The app should also have a section to enter the authorization’s reference number and maybe some associated info such as the last name or passport number or date of birth to be able to retrieve the ETA and know what the validity is instead of merely needing to go back to my email to find it.