How To Renew Your Philippine Passport

I am an administrative mess.  I will be the first to tell you that.  Thus, renewals, payment of bills and all sorts of paperwork are always at the bottom of my To Do list.  In fact, I'd put it off even if I have nothing else to do.  Well my Philippine Passport expired last March.   Oops.  So how did I renew my passport?  It was actually an easy process.

I went on-line to Teleserv DFA Express Passport Delivery.  Naturally I didn't know if it was legit.  But hey, it was on top of a Google search so it had to be good.   Turns out it was.  I scanned through the requirements.  For my situation (normal renewal), I just needed a couple of passport sized photos, photocopies of the first 5 pages and last travel entries in my passport.  They'll take care of getting the old passport and delivering the new ones to you via courier (2GO).  The total fees amounted to P1300, which was a couple of hundreds more than you handling it yourself.  But hey, it's convenient.

Go to to the site and fill out the form.  Make sure all the details are correct.  The questions are intuitive so no problems there.  You don't have to print it out.  They will and they'll bring it to you for signing. 

Everything is scheduled: the pick-up, the personal appearance in the DFA and the delivery.  For the pick-up, the passport owner has to be there to sign some documents and for the fingerprints.    Take note that you get to schedule all three.  Like for me, I scheduled the pick-up and the personal appearance (no you can't avoid this) on succeeding Saturday mornings.   During the personal appearance in the DFA, Teleserv will have several representatives who will spoon feed you on where to go. Not bad at all.  And guess what, before our driver even found a parking space, it was all over.  That must have been 15 minutes tops.

And then two weeks after (10 business day processing time), my renewed passport arrives via courier again.  Mind you, there was no additional charge for my expired passport.  Not bad.  It's the second recent renewal I had without having to bribe anyone.  

If you liked this, maybe you'd also like to read my adventures in Renewing my Philippine Drivers' License.

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