Originally Posted by pinniped

That's a pretty terrible act of customer non-service.

I've used these private white-glove services for visas many times. (They obviously do passports too, but I've never been abroad at the point in time I needed a renewal.) Their entire value-add, and the reason their fees are often well more than the consular fees, is because they triple-check everything and make sure your papers are in order both ways. The current company I use, which is one of the big ones many here have heard of, would almost certainly *not* send me back my passport with an obvious typo in it.