Experience renewing my passport

tl/dr: if you're renewing your passport, book a slot on the appointment website, print appointment letter and turn up directly at the Immigration office with RM200. You'll have your passport ready in about an hour.

the longer version:

For work reasons, I had to renew my passport. I have renewed my passport several times before and I am somewhat familiar with the process. However, this was the first time I was renewing the passport during a global pandemic and I had read horror stories online and from friends/family about their experience with the Immigression department.

I decided to call up the office (on a Sunday morning) and they answered! The lady who answered recommended to walk in but said an appointment was necessary.

I tried to book a slot but the appointment website was just not working. The website was not user friendly; there were broken links on the site, and there was even a link to the survey form which is no longer in use.

Given the appointment website was not working, I went down the route of trying to renew the passport online. I even went to the trouble of getting my photo taken but the online renewal site just would not accept the photo.

Feeling dejected, I went back to the appointment website and decided to poke at Developer Tools to see what was happening behind the scenes.

I immediately realised why the website was not working. I had, in fact, not selected a slot (as they slot options takes a while to load and show up) but had clicked to the next page. This is a basic UX fail. The webmaster needs to make the appointment loading process more visually prominent (perhaps with a throbber) and disallow navigation to next page until a slot is chosen.

When I selected a slot, the appointment flow worked perfectly well.

I turned up the next day at 7am (30 mins before the appointment time at 730am as stipulated in the Immigration website), only to first wait outside the complex for 25 mins and then to wait 10mins outside the bulding. Once they started letting people in, as is the case in Malaysia, a few people started to cut queue. Sigh.

Once we were in the building, I had no idea where to go. There are no directions stated. Everybody else was crowding the poor policeman to get directions so I decided to avoid Policeman Cluster and go check out each entrance individually. I quickly found the passport office.

I was the very first person in the passport office. The helpful policeman at the door called for the counter lady to attend to me. She gave me a number and told me to wait. She then went back to chat with her friends.

5 mins later, she sat at her desk can called for the number. She was quite friendly and in 7 mins, the entire process had concluded. Note that, contrary to what was written in the appointment letter, she didn't ask for any reason or documents for the renewal other then NRIC.

Then it was wait time for another 10mins until they called me for payment. I don't know why I had to wait given there was absolutely nobody else in the office, and there were at least 6 counter staff "at work".

I paid and was told to wait for an hour to get my renewed passport. Instead, I went to run errands and returned 3 hours later.

When I returned, unlike the first time, nobody checked MySejahtera at any point. I self scanned the QR code and self checked my temperature. I then walked up to one of the counters. The lady at the counter was pretty friendly; she guided me in the use of the microchipped passport and gave me advice on keeping the passport safe.

Then I left.

In summary, the process is relatively efficient and the counter staff were friendly. However, the information available online is not presented in a conducive way and there are websites built in the 1990s which have better UX then the Immigration website. Finally, for heaven's sake, enforce MySejahtera checking, please! Government offices need to lead by example.