Woman stranded in Spain after UK eVisa mixes her up with twin

As travel requirements become increasingly digital, some glitches are more baffling than others. Nidia Webb’s experience is a case in point.

Webb has been legally living in the UK for eight years and holds Settled Status. Earlier this month, she expected to return home as usual after a vacation in Spain. But when she reached the boarding gate, she was told she could not board her flight because her UK residency status was not showing correctly in the system.

The plane left without her.

After spending several hours on the phone with the Home Office helpline, the mystery was finally solved. The UK immigration system had not exactly forgotten about her: it had confused her with her identical twin sister.

“My digital settled status had become linked to my identical twin sister’s details rather than my own, meaning my status could not be properly matched to my identity,” Webb told POLITICO.

And according to Webb, the mix-up was not entirely unprecedented. “I was informed that this is a known technical issue affecting some twins within the Home Office system,” she said.

The Home Office did not dispute her account.

Even the confirmation email went to the wrong twin

The problem was then supposed to be fixed, and Webb was told she would be notified once her eVisa account had been corrected.

What happened next might almost sound like a joke if it had not left a traveler stranded abroad: the email confirming that the issue had been resolved was sent… to her twin sister.

As a result, Webb only learned that her status had actually been restored when she tried her luck again at the airport. “I had no idea the issue had been corrected until I was allowed to board my flight home,” she said.

“Had I not spent hours on the phone trying to resolve the matter, I have no idea how long I could have remained stranded abroad,” she added.

The ordeal also cost her a new plane ticket, which she had to pay for out of pocket. According to POLITICO, her travel insurer advised her to seek reimbursement from the Home Office.

A little too identical for the system?

The story may raise a smile, but it also highlights a very real issue for fully digital identity systems.

Not to be confused with the UK’s Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA), an eVisa is a digital record of a person’s UK immigration status. In Webb’s case, it serves as digital proof of an immigration status she already holds: settled status. Information in a traveler’s UKVI account and eVisa must match the passport used for travel, otherwise problems can arise when a carrier tries to verify the traveler’s right to enter the UK.

In Webb’s case, the records associated with the two sisters appear to have become mixed up in the system.

Monique Hawkins, acting chief executive of the3million, an organization representing EU citizens living in the UK, said this type of mix-up was not an isolated occurrence. “We have seen many cases where someone else’s immigration status is entangled with another person’s eVisa account,” she told POLITICO.

Hawkins said the problems show that, despite claims that the eVisa system is robust, “it can fail people at the moments they most need it to work.” She also stressed that it was “crucial that people have a genuinely stable means by which to prove their status,” pointing to cases in which travelers, carriers and the Home Office end up shifting responsibility after someone is denied boarding.

The Home Office, for its part, defended the system and pointed to its use on a very large scale. “Over 10 million people have already successfully used eVisas to prove their immigration status,” a spokesperson said.

The department added that “in the rare cases where errors are identified, the majority of cases are resolved within 24 hours,” while saying it remains committed to improving data accuracy and the safeguards available to eVisa users.

In Nidia Webb’s case, the error was eventually fixed. Still, before her next trip, she will probably check her eVisa twice… and perhaps her sister’s too.