Originally Posted by
Valerian
The pace of rollout of the nextgen passport is embarrassingly slow. And people have reported quality control issues with the back covering having issues with the page peeling off. After more than 6 years of development you would expect a smoother rollout and a better product. On top of all of this, DoS raised the cost of getting a passport and will probably raise prices yet again.
Unfortunately, other than changing citizenships, there's not a whole lot you can do about it. With no competition (for obvious reasons,) there's limited incentive to keep costs reasonable or improve the quality of the document. At this point, the cost of a passport is becoming a real impediment to international travel, particularly to lower-income families. It's a sad state of affairs.