TL;DR: If you've lost your eTA number or the confirmation email, you can just re-apply for one, instead of sending an email to IIRC.
Hey everyone 👋
This is my first post on this sub, and on reddit as a whole. I usually don't feel the need to post anything online, but I this case I feel like I finally have some information that might be worth sharing 😅 After all, I couldn't find this anywhere 😵💫
A little bit of context:
Recently an acquaintance planned a trip to Canada, and on the day of the trip on the, at airport, they got asked for their eTA number, which they didn't have on them, and to make the situation worse, they couldn't find the email that contained the number. Talk about poor planning, lol
I tried helping them on finding the number using the eTA status tool, I thought maybe it would only ask for their passport number, and US visa number, however, the form requires the eTA number or the UCI in order to provide information about its status.
At the moment it seemed like the only thing they could do is sending an email to IIRC with all their information in the hopes that they could help them, but this usually takes time, which they dind't have.
As a Hail Mary, we tried just re-applying to see what would happen, and it turns out that it worked! In a minute or two an email arrived with their new eTA number.
Anyways, I just wanted to share this for the sake of documentation. Hopefully none of you will ever need to go through this process 🙏 And remember, plan ahead, and always make sure you have all the required documents before travelling abroad :)
EDIT: spelling