I have a British passport and I have tried to use the EPassport gate a few times in the UK but it has never worked. The last time I tried, they told me the chip in the passport was broken, even though it is only a year old and it does not look damaged in any way.
I am travelling to the US in a month and I am worried that I might have some problems at passport control. Does anyone have any advice/information?
I cant seem to find a definitive answer online so any info would be appreciated!
I've had a UK passport with a broken RFID chip for over nine years, and I've gone in and out of the US something like 20 times during that period. I have not had any problems whatsoever.
I suspect it would be a problem if you wanted to use the automated entry kiosks in the US, but as long as you're queueing to see an immigration officer, they'll just use the machine-readable text in your passport.
As an aside, I also use the ePassport kiosks when returning to the UK, because I satisfy the requirements (right age, have ePassport; the regulations don't say it has to work). I used to go through the theatre of trying to use the kiosk and failing, but now I just go straight to the "I got rejected" queue at the ePassport line, and tell them the RFID's been broken since day one. I get some funny looks, but it doesn't half cut down on the queueing time.
