Given that you are from Houston and there is a passport office in Houston, I would skip the expediter and go straight to the source. While this may take a day out of your life, it is better than taking a chance with the expediter. See below information from travel.state.gov

I had considered this, until I read several Houston Chronicle articles detailing what an absolute and total wreck the Houston Passport office is at the moment. People from around TX, OK, AR, LA, NM have been referred en masse to the Houston passport office for expedited service. They will not even talk to you if you are not within two weeks of travel. Within two weeks of travel is cutting it a bit close, considering I also need to go to the Brazilian Consulate to get a visa. Lines at the Houston Passport Office begin forming at 3am, and have been reported up to a 1/4 mile long by midmorning; and many of the people who line up do not gain admittance at all over the course of the day. The passport office here switched several months ago from live humans answering the phone to a recorded message. It is impossible to speak to anyone there. In short, it is a complete and total zoo, with no guarantee that turning up will even get you in the door after 12 hours of standing in line in 95 degree heat.

Oops...just saw the bolded bit of your text...still not going there, though.

Just thought pass on personal experience. My sister in law, nephew and father in law applied for passports on Feb. 28. FIL was in a different city, but same state. SIL and Nephew got their passports in late April. I read an article on 2 about the delays and got concerned and did some checking. FIL's passport got processed on June 4 and it was finally delivered June 7, which is obviously more than 12 weeks afterward. Thankfully travel is at the end of July but it was still anxiety we didn't need. Can't imagine others peril.

By comparison, hubby and I applied for our passports in early 2002. He got his in 2 1/2 weeks and I got mine exactly 3 weeks later. Normal fees and everything, nothing expedited. Next year I did a name change (from maiden surname to married) and that also took less than three weeks.

Anyone know who would be best to contact in Virginia? My boss is supposed to leave for Italy on Friday, applied in March and is having no luck getting anything done.

He needs to get his congresscritter on the case.

Sent my renewal overnight expedited on June 4, new one came on June 14. Maybe something is improving or else I just got lucky.
I did scribble "expedite" all over the UPS bag with a big black marker....
But it does have the new chip in it.

FWIW, it would seem the problems are continuing at the Passport Agency. I need my daughter's passport back in 3 weeks (I applied months ago), but since I'll be travelling during much of that time and won't be able to attend to the matter, I called today to see what was going on. Thanks to the tips (dial that "931"), I was able to reach a human being at the Passport Agency. I was told that nothing had been done on her application, but an "urgent escalation" would now be sent by email to the Charleston processing session. I asked whether calling my congressman would help, and she said it "couldn't hurt." So I did that, got the person in the congressional office assigned to passports, and she will check on my application tomorrow.

It sure feels better "doing something" than just waiting where, it would appear, your odds of receiving your passport back are random. I'd also note that you need to be careful about the new Western Hemisphere directive that allows waiver of the passport requirements for getting back into the United States. Many countries still require an actual passport to get INTO their country, so the waiver won't help. Call the embassy of the country you're travelling to and find out their rules.

Does anyone have any recent experience with appointments at the Norwalk agency? I am going to be calling for an appointment for my impatient 3 year old. Is the wait line inside or outside? Where are the bathrooms, or should I bring our car potty along?

Thanks.

Has anyone yet seen a situation where the congressional intervention has NOT produced a passport? I'm assuming that "escalation" tag automatically gets the passport processed, and that's how the congressmen work their "magic."

I'm really trying to avoid trooping down to a passport office to get this (where God only knows what I would encounter in early July), and hope I have now done what needs to be done to get the dang thing issued.

Another case study to add to the pile.

My husband renewed his passport 3/5/07 via mail, no expedite fee. His case number was trackable online after 4 weeks. Online status said his application was processed around 5/30/07 and we received the passport through normal mail on 6/5/07. It took a full 3 months for a renewal, originally was told 8-10 weeks. The passport was the old type, no electronic chip inside.

We applied for our 2 children's passports on 3/19/07 at a US Post Office. We didn't expedite, were told it could take up to 10 weeks (but our travel was beginning of July so we thought we were fine). After 6 weeks, it still didn't show online as having been received. I emailed and got a response after 4 days that it was received --- could track it online after that. More and more passport horror stories were surfacing and I started getting worried. Online kept having the same status: "processing" with no additional info. 6/8/07 US Dept of State said no passport requirements needed for Caribbean (our destination). Birth certificates were sent with the applications, but I had another copy so we were OK. 6/20/07 in the morning, status was still the same "processing"; in the afternoon, status changed to "processed, will receive in the normal US mail around 6/25/07". Imagine my surprise getting 2 FedEx packages today 6/21/07 --- passports were next day FedEx delivered! Passports were the NEW type, electronic. Apparently they are paying attention to the travel date you listed when you applied, otherwise I don't see why they would FedEx the passports when we didn't expedite. No congressional help, though I did call to ask (they said to call back within 2 weeks of travel). All in all, just over 3 months for my children's new passport applications.

First of all, very sorry for your situation. I do feel badly for you. I just got my passport back from getting addtional visa pages. It took just about 12 weeks and I was sweating it out as I had several trips planned. I ended up getting it back a few days before I needed it.

I have a couple of questions. Please humor me and answer them as I really am curious. First, why would anyone stamp in those last 4 pages? Also, why does that automatically make you ineligible for additional pages? Finally, what are those pages SUPPOSED to be used for?

Here's what I see in my passport. Pages 1 - 21 are numbered visa pages. 22, 23, and 24 are called Amendments & Endorsements. There isn't a 4th page--there's just the inside back cover which resembles pages 22, 23, and 24 without having a number on it.

When the additional pages were added, they were added directly in the middle of my passport between 2 numbered visa pages, both of which are completely full. On the inside back cover (not a numbered page) there's a typed statement written sideways up near the binding that states that the passport was amended on a specific date to add visa pages. The visa pages are literally taped in the middle of the passport and the first page, A, explains that it's a supplement under seal, etc. The "seal" is not a full seal -- you can clearly see that they attempted to seal it, but they didn't press down hard enough on about 1/2 of it. I've read elsewhere that the seal is no longer necessary.

So, after that lengthy description, I guess I still don't understand how the fact that some county stamped where they shouldn't have affects the addition of visa pages. Unless they stamped on the inside back cover, wouldn't you be ok?

Vitalchek is great for some states and not-so-good for others. For some states, the fastest that you can get it through vitalchek is like 12-15 business days. I ended up driving as vitalchek couldn't possibly deliver it in time. I had a cruise and my passport was out for processing. My original bc was deemed "not acceptable" due to a style change (long story but it WAS the original bc, not a hospital version).

I have a data point to add to this. I finally got my passport back yesterday after sending it in for additional visa pages in early April. I DID have a Netherlands stamp on the first page of the Amendments and Endorsements section and I received my additional pages with no hassle in this regard. I believe those pages are used to keep track of things like page amendments since now the last page of in that section says "This passport was amended on Jun 19 2007 to add visa pages to passport number xxxxxxx"

Picky question here, retien. I'm just curious about this whole subject. Is that amendment stamp on one of the actual numbered amendments pages or is it the inside back cover? Mine is literally on the inside of the back cover. It runs perpendicular to the bar code.

You are correct, the amendment declaration the State Dept added is on the back inside cover as you stated. However, I believe that this back page is actually part of the amendment and endorsements section because my passport (which was originally a 24 page passport) has page 22 with the "Amendments and Endorsements" qualifier while the adjacent page 23 does not. Page 24 has this qualifier as well, while the back inside cover does not. So I assume it is also part of that section based on the way pages 22 and 23 are labeled/not labeled if that makes sense.