As you are doing a renewal, you keep your GE benefits include Pre past your expiration later this year. Just do an interview on arrival.

Yeah, I'm certainly going to try that. But given this Kafkaesque system, I suspect there will be some inexplicable reason why the Customs folks couldn't possibly interview me upon my arrival. :)

You give them too much credit. Five years ago, my wife and I needed renewals and had the EXACT same travel history. I needed an interview, she didn't. This time, we both need interviews.

I do suspect it's possible that, if you visited a lot of countries, and some of them sound sketchy (maybe China?) you're more likely to be required to have an interview. Although my wife visited such countries 5 years ago. Much of the selection may be random, like at TSA checkpoints.

I think Kafka would think paying a fee, filing in a form, and doing a short interview, wouldn’t be worthy of his name.

I appreciate we all need a rant every so often, but you really are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. As I noted if this is all to arduous for you, just let it lapse and at least you won’t have anything to moan about ;)

The free market solution for the interview problem would be to reduce demand by pricing GE at a significantly higher level than PreCheck. The $15 difference between the two programs pushes a bunch of folks to get GE ‘just in case’.

In the mean time, Mobile Alabama has a bunch of open appointment slots for July. Since they only do interviews on three dats a week, it’s essentially wide open.

I suppose, but $100 for a nenewal seems like plenty of money to run this system rationally. First, the whole interview thing is mostly theater. I guess my first interview was sort of an interview, I at least got asked a couple questions. No interview was done when I showed up -- after great effort -- at my renewal "interview" 5 years ago. Obviously, if resources are limited, you should not require optional interviews where your backround check is telling you that person doesn't REALLY need to be interviewed.

BTW, speaking of limited resouces, in my recent experiences passing through US Customs it's seemed like they have become significantly less thorough in screening people for stuff than they used to be. Going through Global Entry basically involved no screening at all. There may be good reasons for this -- they may know from their database what their real concerns are -- but if that's true, I don't understand why this interview scheduling nonsense is still going on.

At this point, it comes down to just getting fingerprints for 95%+ of GE applicants at initial enrollment. Which could be done at any IdentoGo outpost that already handles. TSA PreCheck enrollment. Revise the rules so that the 95% can indeed just go the IdentoGo route, send the 5% with questions to a ‘proper’ CBP screening point and it would get a lot less backlogged.

In the mean time, there seems to be plenty of interviews available in March in Fairbanks, Alaska if that would help anyone.

Moderator's Note - Topic Drift
 

Folks, this is a practical advice forum. Please get back on topic, that is availability of appointments for Global Entry enrollment interviews.

Commentary, opinions and rants about the interview process and/or experiences going through CBP inspections belong in the TS/S Policy Debate forum.

Future off-topic posts will be summarily deleted without further notice.

Thank you for your anticipated co-operation,

TWA884
Travel Safety/Security co-moderator

Thanks all for the replies. I can see that there are interviews available at MIA for my arrival date, and there are 3+ time slots available all day. When I select the date I want, every time slot appears but I can't select any time slot to proceed with the booking - anyone have any clues as to why it is sticking at this point? I am putting in 3 interviews required and most time slots on the day have 4 interviews available, but I can't select any of them. Screenshot is for 5PM that day but the box isn't selectable.


https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...071a332519.png

I figured out my booking issue - I had to log into the account first then book the interview one at a time. Now have 3 interviews booked as backup incase we can’t do EOA at MIA.

Didn't realize we had a availability thread on this. My wife and I used ttptracker.com to get an appointment before our mini vacation. It's a site that helps you with finding global entry interviews/appointments. I believe it also works for other travel programs like nexus. There's a free option that makes noises when an appointment is found but you have to sit around the computer. We used the SMS one and it's cheaper than the other ones in the market like appointmentscanner. Thought I'd share this with others struggling to find appointments it's a pretty valuable tool.

Not sure if this is the correct place for his post, so apologies if it isn’t.

Just a heads up for those looking for an in person interview at SEA. For a while it’s been a case of all appointments being fully booked until the end of Sept this year with no availability planned in after that.

A day or two ago a raft of new appointment slots were released for June and July. As well as being a positive in itself, it appears to having the effect of causing some random availability to begin appearing in August and September, I’m assuming being freed up as people reschedule appointments into the newly released earlier availability.

Thanks for using my app!
 

Hey y'all!

I found that y'all were using my app (The vercel app in this thread) and I wanted to say thank you! I recently added two new features to the app based off this thread.

1. If there are no appointments for your selected airport, we will re-check every 30 seconds until we find an appointment.
2. If we find an appointment, a "bell" notification sound will play.

If y'all have any other suggestions, please let me know! Happy to help.

Hope I've got the right thread. Just got done setting up my husband's interview at DFW for Sept. 5. Lots of openings in September right now. I think they just released the new appointments that usually happen on the first Monday. Good luck.

Anyone happen to know how far ahead Global Entry interview appointments appear for IAD / Dulles?

I'm plotting a long layover at IAD in October. Would love to finally get my global entry interview done. CBP site currently states "Appointments full thru:September 29, 2023". Works for me, I'd love an appointment after that :). But I see no option.

If nothing appears I'll try interview on arrival again. But would prefer an actual appointment as my last 2 attempts on arrival at PHL and ATL were not successful. Sounds like someone further ^up the thread was successful on arrival at least

Getting my parents an interview has proved impossible. I signed up for Appointment scanner and unfortunately, the stupid Trusted Traveler website forces them to do the whole text message dual authentication thing every time they login. It doesn't matter if they click "remember this browser next time." The website always sees them as a new user and always makes them both do the passcode. There are no appointments anywhere near them. They are basically screwed.