Deja Vu, again: Passport price increase
 

An increase in passport fees is proposed for later this year. Included is a hefty fee to have extra visa pages added.

-First-time passport book for adult - increasing from $100 to $135
-Renewal passport book for adult - increasing from $75 to $110
-Passport book for minors - increases from $60 to $105
-Additional visa pages for passport book - from no charge to $82
-Passport card for adult - from $20 to $30
-Passport card for minors - from $10 to $15.

State Department release here

Start the stampede now.

Don't have one; don't need one; don't want one. Though that might change should I want to go on cruises again (I haven't taken one since they stopped accepting original birth certificates in lieu of passports).

Which is why my passport went in for renewal last week - even though I had 18 months left....

Well the govt has to get the money back from all the subsidies they doled out and they don't have a lot of options - increasing taxes and cutting public spending spring to mind!

Went in last Friday to get mine and my spouses. Also intend to use the PP Card for airline travel. Tired of TSA looking at my address when I'm going out of town.

Had heard cost was going up.

Wasn't this the same administration that just this month was deriding the proposed increases by some insurers in their health insurance premiums?

Could one simply put pieces of tape over the non-pertinent information (like address) on the DL? Serious question, as I may be heading somewhere via plane in the next few months (likely not by choice)...

I didn't know you could renew that far out. Mine has over 4 years left.... don't think that's happening. I knew I should have had pages added last time in Berlin.

tomorrow I'm going to SDQ. Even though I have plenty of pages in my passport book, I'm gonna get pages added at the Embassy.

One of the TSA types might answer for you but remember any TSA person can make up any rules on any given day as they like and you have no recourse.

I would still do it just to see what happens.

My experience at PBI really got my attention. The TDC went line by line through my name and address. Had a pen in his hand and I watch as he went through the information. When your 1200 miles away from home you have to be concerned that a message might be sent to case the house.

Given TSA employees history of illegal acts I would take every precaution to protect as much personal information as possible. You never know when you will get the one with bad intent.

Given TSA's track record of employing bad apples, ex-convicts, and perverts, that might be a safer assumption to make than most would realize. ;)

+1

That is the reason that I filed an app for the passport card last Friday. They even had the list of new prices hanging on the wall in front of me, but did not know when they would be changed... Glad I did it last week! I'm also glad that I won't have a nosy TSO staring at my home address!

Not a chance. In fact, the document checker was giving the girl in front of me at IAD a really hard time yesterday because her DL was stuck (as in she couldn't get it out) in her billfold. She had numerous other pieces of ID that she tried to use when he said that it wasn't good enough to look through the plastic window - she had to physically remove it even it it meant tearing her billfold. :td:

4 years is probably stretching it -at some point it doesn't make sense. Some countries want multiple months left on the PP past the proposed departure date. I wanted a PP Card, extra pages, and went ahead and did the renewal (to avoid having to send it back soon).

Yeah, the increase is about 3 years' "worth" of passport so it makes sense.

This is government at its finest. Congress imposes a bunch of new requirements but presumably didn't give the State Department any money to implement them. So the State Department does a "cost study" of how much processing passports costs, and then says it should pass those costs on to citizens.

I really don't buy the "user fee" approach for something like passports. I'm not buying the service of being allowed to go overseas. I should be allowed to do so, and if the US wants to impose certain hoops for me to do it, okay, but the citizens as a whole should be bearing those costs, not the individual traveller.

maybe the Printing Office needs to increase profits
 

I mean on top of the $100 million they made back in 2008. How did they manage to accomplish this? they outsourced production of the passport book to a firm in Thailand.

(from: http://boingboing.net/2008/03/27/sta...tment-mak.html)