Originally Posted by
captiveguru
I appreciate all the responses. I am not near a city with a passport agency.
My concern is twofold; 1) conversations with people who recently (i.e. in 2015), tried to renew their passports indicated 8+ weeks for non-expedited renewals, 2) I may need to travel internationally sooner than the currently-planned mid-August trip. Unable to ask for congressional help as I actively supported the losing candidate in the last election...
Please don't try to convenience me to not use an expediter, just help me find the right one. Looking for renewal experiences during the last 12-18 months.
I have found people who are only interested in an answer and do not listen to advice about the question itself are often asking the wrong question.
You do not need an expediting services, all you need is to pay the extra 60 bucks for expediting (and pay for an overnight envelope if you so choose) and your passport will be back within 3 weeks, if not a lot sooner. By the way, the standard passport processing time right now is 4-6 weeks.
I would guess most people you were talking to about expediting services (compared to the State Department's normal expediting process) were talking about visas, not a passport. There are very few cases in which using a passport expediting services makes sense for a simple application.