Electronic Travel Application for England

Posted by lowlyduane on 04/24/25 03:43 PM

I'm about as plain jane, all American as you can get and my ETA application has been rejected twice. I used the app on my iPhone both times. Every step in the app was approved by the app. They give me the same 3 "possible" reasons for the rejections.
1. my passport may have been lost or stolen. You have to take a pic of your passport in the app so that's not it.
2. they couldn't confirm my identity from the picture I provided. The app approved everything and graciously allowed me to pay for it twice.
3. I did not provide all the information they needed, or I made a mistake. Again, the app approved everything every step of the process.

There is a chat option if you have questions for the ETA people but when you click on it nothing happens. Any suggestions on what my next step might be.

Thanks in advance,
Mark

Posted by CL

Salem, Oregon, USA

04/24/25 04:12 PM

3058 posts

You could try applying on the website instead. https://apply-for-an-eta.homeoffice.gov.uk/apply/electronic-travel-authorisation/how-to-apply

As you have applied twice I would persist in contacting the ministry for clarification. Note you must do this during their business hours, so do some time zone adjustments before you try to use the chat function. Best of luck.

Posted by Mardee

Duluth 🛶

04/24/25 04:16 PM

9039 posts

Did you enter your information manually or were you able to scan the chip in your passport successfully?

Are you absolutely sure that all information was provided correctly; eg, passport number, date of expiration, etc.?

Posted by BillTN

Tennessee

04/24/25 05:12 PM

116 posts

And of course, most of EU wants DD/MM/YY instead of MM/DD/YY so double check that...

Posted by RickS

Delanson, NY

04/24/25 06:31 PM

94 posts

I applied for myself via the app. It went very smoothly and I got the approval notification within 30 minutes via email. When you do it through the app it's interactive and you just focus on your passport and then on yourself for the selfie photo and it helps you hone in on the right angle and exposure.

Then I tried to apply for my 85 year old mother via the app. We'd get as far as the passport scan and every time (a week of trying) it would then crap out and say "resubmit or try again later". We both got our most recent passports in early 2020 so they have the chip. Finally I decided to use the website application instead of the app for her. This is a harder way to do it because you need to upload a photo of the info page of the passport and then upload a selfie photo that meets their specifications. You'd think that would be easy but you have to get that photo precisely correct to satisfy them. On about the fifth photo we finally succeeded. So she has her ETA now, but it was quite a hassle.