With several weeks between foreign trips we mailed in our passports for the extra pages. Several weeks later, and just before our next overseas trip, I called the 800 number. Very efficiently the clerk looked it up and said that our passports were "being held" in Charleston and that it would be six weeks before they were mailed back. I also hold a Canadian passport but Mrs. Fredd doesn't so it a moment of panic ensued - we were about to set off for a non-cancellable one month on a Turkish yacht sailing around the Aegean and Mediterranean.

At that moment, thank goodness, the clerk told me that I could pay over the phone with a credit card for expedited service. We did and we had the passports in hand three days later. Even though we had sent them in together they were shipped back separately so my credit card was charged for both little Fedex envelopes that arrived together, a further little ding to the wallet.

Obviously from what I read here others have gotten the pages added within a couple of weeks, but from my experience I strongly urge you not to rely on that. If I wanted to be snide, I'd compare it to what the Turks and others call baksheesh, but perish the thought.

Cheers,
Fredd