Finally got them
 

We did finally receive our passports. Here are a few tips for those struggling through the system.

1. At 4 weeks check the website for the status of your application.
https://passportstatus.state.gov/opss/OPSS_Status_i.asp

2. If your application does not appear yet with a record locater email them for a status. Finally after 5 weeks and my email the passports showed up on the tracking page. Note the record locater and if they email you a response the office that has your passport. This came in very handy to me later.

3. Ok, it is 14 days before your trip. Call the passport office 1-877-487-2778. The trick to the phone system is to dial 1-1-0 to get a person. If it comes up saying "Due to High call volumes....." press 9 (previous menu) and then repeat the 1-1-0. You may have to do this quite a few times to get in the queue.

4. Tell them you are going to travel with in 14 days. My contact suggested I tell them a date 3 days before I was actually traveling. A little cushion to allow for screw ups and issues. They will apply for you to be upgraded to expedite status.

5. Call back in 2 days. See if they have granted expedited status. Keep calling until they have granted the upgraded status.

6. You have been upgraded to expedited status - Now you have to call at least once a day. If there are no issues it should ship in about 2 days. What you are looking for are problems called exceptions. The problem with these exceptions is that the people we call do not know what the exceptions are and can not help us. The passport office does not call you , they send a letter in the mail. Doesn't make much sense when you are traveling within 14 days.

7. Ok, you have an exception, Call your Congressman, have all your information including the office that has your passport. In my case, they were able to talk to the person processing our passports within 10 minutes and found out what the issue was.

Unfortunately this was a very stressful process. I would not have received our passports in time if it was not for the Congressman's help. In my case although I was told by the post office that on a renewal of a kids passport a birth certificates is not needed this is not the case. Send the birth certificate on all kids passport renewals every time.

Please understand this was only my experience and I do not work for any governement agency. I hope this helps.

Nice to hear your good news PhxITGeek. My kids passports are in a Fedex truck somewhere in Tempe right now and I have a Fedex tracking number for my wife's - but no shipment yet. Should arrive by Friday.

Our original plan was to fly LAX-DUB on June 11 - which is what we put on our original passport application.

We since changed our plans to visit Anaheim before flying out of LAX. We were able to update the passport folks with a revised travel date of June 7.
They were OK with that. Strictly speaking, our June 11 flight date didn't change - it's just that there would have been nobody at home from June 7. As soon as it became apparent to us that they were shipping passports by travel date, we quickly moved to adjust the info.

An Interesting article.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...g/4814833.html

Thanks for posting your useful insights PhxITGeek.

I imagine that it must have been very stressful for a while given the problem with a child's birth certificate. I guess that the real moral of the story is to be proactive when you reapply for your passport and keep in touch. You've created a good template for others to follow and (hopefully) avoid problems.

Have a nice trip.

Barry

Anyone know if you can show up in Miami without an appointment. We are supposed to fly tomorrow night but my friend's passport never showed. USAir has told me they will do anything they can do to rebook us for this problem, but we can't get an appointment on Tuesday through the automated system.

My friend paul was able to, but he showed up at the agency at 4am the morning of his departure. He had his passport within 2 hours. He's the only person I've known of that's been able to do this.

It's always advisable to fork over the extra $60 for the expedited service. I had mine replaced last year before an international trip. Mine was lost and it only took about a week to get my new one. It was unfortunate as I'd just had it renewed a few months earlier.

Another option is to use a "hand carry" service. Some of these places will actually take your application in for immediate approval. These aren't cheap but they are effective.

Went Directly to Congressman
 

It has now been 9 weeks since I mailed in my passport to Philadelphia with 63 cents postage requesting standard processing of adding pages to an existing passport. My next trip would be roughly within 11 weeks of submittal.

After 4 weeks, the on line system acknowledged the existence of my transaction.

After 8 weeks, I tried calling them, but never got through.

An email inquiry was returned stating that they were unable to locate the item.

So, I just called my Congressman's district office; his office acknowledged my request on the following day. On the next business day his office provided me with a Fed Ex tracking number and advised that the passport is being processed on an expedited basis.

I am receiving free Fed Ex service as a result, and have saved the $60 expediting fee. (This was put to good use taking a friend to lunch; people need to focus on priorities.)

Update: Later on the same day I check the Fed Ex website. It now advises that my shipment was picked up at 1223pm ET at Charleston SC, and departed there at 853pm. It is due to be delivered to me on the west coast by tomorrow by 1030am.

Second Update: 6 days after contacting my Congressman, a Fed Ex package is delivered to my home at 1016am, as promised by Fed Ex.

Third Update: May 30: my passport is back, 9 weeks after sending it in, with a total cost of $1.65! Time to celebrate!

How's that for service?

I'm not leaving for Iceland for another 16 days.

Glad to hear you're getting it. It's really ridiculous that you have to resort to calling your congressman for such a simple bureucratic function. It's not even like this has to go through approvals and the Congressman needed to weigh in on your behalf -- all they have to do is stick some pages in there!

Just imagine if you had to call your congressman to get your mail delivered or your trash picked up. Both of which, incidentally, require a lot more resources, money, and coordination than someone sticking some pages in your passport and mailing it back to you.

I guess the lesson to everyone is to always at least pay for expedited. I still will always go in person within 14 days of travel, myself.

peace,
~Ben~

PS> Woohoo! My 1500th FT post. :) Being bored at work this week sure helped.

What we are seeing is the result of an unfunded mandate. Thousands of people who never had to have passports before now have to have them. However, it looks as if no provisions were made for handling the extra applications until the process was in full meltdown mode. :(

I paid for mine with a credit card. I got mine at the PP agency in Washington DC, same day expedited service.

I got my first passport in 20 minutes in Philadelhia. But that was in 1986.

Unfunded my .... They raised the cost of a passport $12 to a total cost of $97 in 2005 PLUS almost everyone is paying the $60 expedite charge just to get non-expedited service for a grand total of $157 per new passport. The passport agency should be rolling in cash. All for a little booklet that couldn't possibly cost more than $2 to produce. Add in 5 minutes of a $20 an hour employees time to verify the documents and process the thing and I'm sure any private company could turn them out in 3 days for $8 a piece and still make a profit. There is no excuse at all for the current debacle.

It's obvious the extra cost of a passport goes to storage - hence the 12-14 weeks time elapsed between application and delivery. :)

Yes, for what we're paying, the service sucks. I'm particularly annoyed with the childrens' passports which are only good for 5 years They charge about as much as the adults for renewal (kids are required to appear in person with their parents, presumably to prevent child-napping -- you pay an extra fee for the privilege of showing up at the Post Office).

I've got one kid's passport out now which I need back by July. I had a little less than 11 weeks. You'd think a month would be TONS of time to reissue an existing passport. I sure hope I don't have to resort to the "helpful tricks" that have been described above. But thanks for providing the playbook if I do!