Originally Posted by
GUWonder
The periodical backlogs for US passports got much worse following WHTI requiring Americans to have passports for all flights into and out of the US. Staffing up and being equipped for peak demand based on how many passports are anticipated to be expiring would run up my passport costs a lot— no thanks, as I would rather not see my US passport costs jump up because of that too.
There are other “western countries” that have been a mess too with getting passport applications in and passports out. At least with the US passport applications, there are emergency routes to get applications in and turned quickly. A variety of the “orderly” European passport issuing authorities are more hostile toward urgent passport needs by their nationals than the US State Department.
The way the human eye still works, reviewing ink-on-paper vs other material tends to be more accurate and sustainable at stretches than reviewing digital material vs digital material.
Agree to disagree on this. A passport is a once every ten year event - most people do not buy more than 8 of them in their lifetime, if they are lucky to live that long and be healthy enough for travel. I'm ok spending an extra $10-$20 over a 10 year period to have reasonable turnaround times, or at least for better transparency around their service commitments. As it stands right now, there are people who have submitted in mid-December that still have not seen movement on their applications. They were quoted 6-9 weeks at that time, and they are still in "Adjudication" status some 13 weeks later. Hold times for phone calls are north of 4 hours to reach a representative. God forbid you applied online, because you'll be in for another 2+ hour wait since that frontline rep will need to transfer you to a different queue.
This after the website has demonstrated serious security issues - displaying a login for their Oracle backend, amongst reliability issues where the site just dies for hours at a time with no explanation. No idea if that is because they are operating on a shoestring budget, lack talent, have difficult legacy systems to integrate with, or what.
I am at 11 weeks myself, going on 12 weeks. I applied in December thinking that I would be beating the rush - I guess not. Having had enough and worried that my application was slipping through the cracks, I paid for expedited handling and was put into "Fulfillment" two days later from "Adjudication". Hopefully I get my book soon.
To say that the online program is a failure to date is being too kind.