<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by gnaget:
Pardon the tenuous relevance to UA but I think a lot of people here share my annoyance.
I have never renewed a US passport in the USA. I found out that it takes 6 weeks (!) if you do it stateside. You can pay $100+ extra to expedite it to 2 weeks (!) or you can make a special appointment at the local (DC for me) passport office and you have to cough up the extra fee. Oh yeah, you can't ask any questions without calling a 900 number. ...? How do we let these thieves get away with this nonsense or maybe its unpatriotic to leave the country? And unfathomable that a 6 week window is not plenty of time?
My wife told me that it really only takes a couple of weeks with the standard service. (She renewed in 1998.) Is this still true? Otherwise I think I will renew at the consulate when I am in CPH.</font>
It can take up to six weeks depending on how busy they are, if they are not all that busy then it will take less. I believe currently they are running two to three weeks from what was posted in another thread here.
The fee for expediting it is only $60 additional, not $100 additional. If you have six weeks then you pay less then if you need it in two weeks, if you need it overnight you have to pay more for that and go to a passport office, or pay an expediting service even more.
They are not theives, and it's not nonsense, If you need telephone information then you have to pay for it, there isn't any reason for me to pay for it for you. If you need it in a hurry, you have to pay an extra fee (just like getting a visa with most countries, dollar amount is based on how quick you need it back) for your application to go to the head of the line.