Originally Posted by
Moderator2
I'm not completely clear on your reference to "1-2 day return". That seems to me as if you are intended that the State Department ship it back to you Express. Two weeks ago I went into the local USPS to mail out of my wife's passport renewal, and the branch clerk charged me $7.95 to Priority envelope it to the Passport office PO Box, which I charged to a debit card. I enclosed a check to the State Department for a total of $187.56 ($110 for the renewal, $60 for expedited handling, $17.56 for Express mail return). From your photo, there did not appear to be a $7.95 charge for outgoing Priority, which would included the 18 digit tracking number.
My wife's passport arrived today via Priority Mail, one day short of five weeks. The USPS envelope had a Portsmouth, NH return address. When I enter the tracking number in the post office's system, the earliest date benchmark is yesterday, which was a sorting facility about six miles from my local post office. Nonetheless, no complaints about the processing time, which from reviewing the last month's posts in this thread seems to be about the mean for those who used expedited service and round-trip Priority Mail.