Portuguese Residency "All Sorted"

Our dealings with the bureaucracy of the Portuguese immigration system are completed for another three years.  In the last year, Portugal has taken to opening up renewals on a quarterly basis.  So if your residency card expires in a given calendar quarter, a set of instructions will be issued sometime in those three months on how to renew.  Unfortunately, the rules can also change with little notice, which is exactly what happened to both of us.

Mark's residency expired in Q4 2023.  In late October, it was emphatically announced that all renewals would be done in face-to-face appointments.  After scrambling for several days to secure an appointment via an online booking system, Mark was able to get an appointment for late November in the Algarve.  Lots of paperwork was gathered in anticipation of the appointment.  Then in early November, an announcement was made on the website of a no-longer-existent government agency:  online residency renewals (which required no meeting and no paperwork) were now open.  Should we believe this announcement or not?  Eventually, we saw enough comments from people on Facebook that we decided to believe online renewal was indeed possible, so that's the route we took.  We registered for renewal, paid the fee, and cancelled the meeting appointment.  On January 19, Mark received his new residency card, good for three more years.

Debra's residency expired in Q1 2024.  In January, it was announced once again that all renewals would be done in face-to-face appointments.  This time, however, appointments were extremely difficult to get anywhere in the country.  A friend of ours was able to secure an appointment in January, but she had to go all the way to Porto, about 350 miles away.  We tried every few days, but never were able to get an appointment.  We had a feeling that online renewals were once again going to be offered soon.  Sure enough, in early March, we read on an obscure Facebook group that online renewals were again open on the same website of the no-longer-existent government agency.  We registered Debra for renewal and paid the fee.  We received her new residency card four weeks later on April 5th, and it's good for another three years.  And what happened to our friends who went to face-to-face meetings in January and submitted lots of paperwork?  They are still waiting for their cards over three months later!