Today a new online renewal process was announced for ARI investors:
I am knowingly and intentionally starting a new thread for tracking experiences and advice with the NEW online ARI renewal process. My motivation is to keep this focused, topical, and separate from the miscellaneous content in the renewal mega-thread. I welcome comments about failure, problem solving, and success regarding registration, completion, payment, and any available documentation of completion (especially for travel). And it’ll also be interesting to know when cards arrive relative to the date(s) of renewal and payment.
To get things started, I’ll observe that I attempted and failed to create a login. The site is pointedly restricted to Portuguese IP addresses, but that was not an obstacle.
Moving along, it asks you whether you want to proceed in Portuguese or English. This may be a trick question…see below. In general I’ve noticed that Portuguese web sites sometimes operate less smoothly when the “English” option is chosen vs. the default Portuguese option.
The account creation process prompts for:
- email address
- residence card number
- NIF
- birthday
The birthday field allows free-form entry, but in which date format? 
I used the date picker widget, in English, and I was surprised to observe that it filled in the date in the familiar US format (MM/DD/YYYY). That’s surprising and slightly alarming, since date parsing bugs are common on low volume, multilingual web sites. Anyway, I was rejected with the message “Citizen not identified or not eligible at this stage”. Then I tried again in the Portuguese site (probably better tested, with the DD-MM-YYYY format), and failed again with the message “Cidadão não identificado ou sem acesso nesta fase”. I tried one more time using the date widget, clicking the left arrow 500 times to reach my birth month, and failed yet again.
The announcement mentions that the site will go online next week. I’ll wait for that day and try again. Meanwhile, I welcome others’ observations and tips. Perhaps I’m misreading my residence card number (I vs 1, O vs. 0), and missing out on the fun and simplicity of online renewal. So if others announce success, I’ll know I’m doing something wrong and try harder.
Best of luck everyone!
