I picked up the renewal form at the post office. I can't find any spot to mark for extra pages and I thought you could request them to return your old passport but I find nothing about that, either.

What's up?

Assuming you are talking about a US Passport?

I just go to a passport office and ask at the window for extra pages. When I had to renew, I FedEx'd it in to the national passport center and they returned the old one with the new one. The punched a hole through the old one.

Check the passport renewal website. It does mention how to get the additional pages, but I do not remember if there is a separate form or if you just include a note asking for them.

I went to the post office to fill and send my renewal application this month. I asked for the passport with the additional pages and the clerk just wrote a note on a sticky paper and put it on the renewal form.

Exactly what I did when I sent in my renewal request last week. Will post what happens when the new one shows up.

If the old (expiring) passport has any visas that are still valid, just fold over a corner of that page. When they punch a hole in the old passport, the visa(s) will still be valid, but you have to use both the old and the new passports for a while.

According to the feds,

If you're traveling overseas, it makes sense to get additional pages put in at a U.S. Embassy. I was in Singapore last month and stopped at the embassy and it was painless. First off, no waiting in line if you're a U.S. citizen; go inside, fill out a short form and hand in your passport. Literally, in ten minutes my name was called and the pages were put in.

Of course, there could be a longer wait depending on time of day or the embassy in question. I was also going to London but decided to pass on the embassy there since it's so large and there are so many Americans in the UK.

Caloy, that is unnecessary and woldn't work in many cases anyway. Countries either allow their visas to be valid beyond the date of an invalid passport or they do not. Whether there is a hole punched in the passport, or the page in question is immaterial. Besides there is no standard pattern to how the pages are punched through in any case. And yes you have to carry the old one around to the places you are using the visa for.

Update to post #5: Worked like a charm, I got 48 pages. They're all bound and numbered through 48, not like an addition taped in from the start. First use in about three weeks.

Regarding Caloy's post #6: My old one came back with two holes in it, one toward the lower right and one toward the upper right, both pretty far in. To avoid a hole in a page, both corners would have to have been folded in about as far as they could possibly go without multiple folds. So, even if this does work (re which see hfly's post immediately above this one), it would have taken two folds. It's impossible to predict the hole-punching style of whichever person happens to process a particular passport. It may be impossible to fold a page to avoid all of them, at least without making the fold so obvious that it would be unfolded before the hole(s) is/are punched.

To my great relief I found that I could renew my passport on-line without even going to the p.o. (I don't know about your p.o. but ours has a window for p.ports and people wait there for hours).
So I sent it in, and in 5 weeks or so I got my new one and my old one back with it.
My only lament? Open the two passports and compare the pics side by side...wah

Thanks for this and other interesting and informative thread about U.S. Passport Renewal ^

I plan to renew mine in about two weeks at the quasi-embassy known as AIT (American Institute in Taiwan) in Taipei and this bring up my question:

I am a dual-citizen (U.S. and Taiwan) and still posses my TW passport which I use to exit and reenter Taiwan while I use my US one at my destination (to bypass visa requirements)

My question is this: Can I renewal my US passport in a third country I travel to frequently, such as Hong Kong, and take advantage of whatever expedited service at a 'real' US Embassy/Consulate that is not available here in TW even thou I don't reside there? Will I dig myself a proverbial hole with any dual-citizen issue associated with this decision?

Many thanks ahead for all the answers tips!

I did just exactly that when submitting my wife's old 48 page passport which even had two sets of additional pages. In addition I also had a post-it note on the old passport and another on the application form requesting the larger 48 passport. They just gnored all the notes and signed request and sent back a skinny new 24 page one . We then immediately sent it back for additional pages.

One would think that when they receive an old fat passport for renewal with requests for a larger passport that they'd honor the request but that is not always the case.

You can renew your passport at any US diplomatic mission abroad with a consular/citizen services section. It should not matter whether or not you are a resident in that particular country. Only problem might be that since US passports are now only produced by the passport centers in the US, you would have to be in Hong Kong long enough to collect it later.

As far as the dual citizen issue, do not even bring it up with officials. That's what every dual citizen (including myself) advise and do. No point in doing so, as being a dual citizen technically has no bearing on your status as a US citizen. And besides, "officially" Taiwanese citizenship does not exist, right? So from a legal perspective there should be no problem. (I hope I am not opening a can of worms here.)

Listen to Schmeck.