Originally Posted by
worldiswide
My daughter applied online on Feb 5 just before online closed down and status hasn't changed from received since Feb 8th. This thread of course makes me concerned about upcoming travel for April that we did not think we be any problem. . I understand the 15 days before travel for contacting the passport help line but how early did people reach out to their representatives to get the ball rolling.
And why isn't this a bigger news story? Why don't we see this in national newspapers that the commitments made on the site are not reliable and make it exceedingly difficult to plan travel. A passport is pretty valuable thing to have and to wait months when you have requested and paid for expedited service just doesn't seem right.
If the data points are to be believed - it's online applicants that got the shaft. Paper applications seem to be making the service commitments.
It's unclear why that is - perhaps some passport specialists aren't trained on how to process online applications, maybe there were system outages, or other technical problems. Rumor has it that they are converting online applications to paper applications in order to process them more quickly. But I agree with you - this should be a story. Other western countries seem to have no trouble turning around routine applications in a matter of days or weeks. I don't buy the WHTI excuse - they know how many passports are expiring (all online apps are renewals) and so the office should be adequately staffed to handle that demand.