That's what happened when I renewed my children's passports. They retained the old one... three weeks later I got the new onesAre those the rules for your country? That they keep the old passport with themselves and just hand over the new one to you? In my country you get to keep your old passport because many times there are valid visas on the old passport (like US multiple entry visa valid for 5 years) that you can't just apply for every time you have a passport change. So if somebody has visas for 50 countries on their old passport they will lose all of them? That sounds implausible. Are you sure those are the rules?