Passport Anxiety
 

So I applied for my passport 01/15/2021, they did not process it until March 22, 2021. It's in New Hampshire. My trip is scheduled for 04/29/21 I called today to have it expedited and 1-2 day shipping. It came off my credit card within an hour. That was early afternoon. Had a weird feeling and just called back tonight that its an question mark/pending alert, but it is in the hands of someone else. They explained it had no notation, and to call back tomorrow to see if it clears. I have nothing on my background, credit anything like that..I'm in pure panic because now I'm afraid it won't arrive in time. What else can I do? I emailed two state representatives and just got an automated response. 16 days until I leave.

They gave me the same status of it can take up-to 10 - 12 weeks to process and if we needed it sooner, they can call in the expedition by using our CC or we can call them and once we pay, we need to call the senator's office to see if they can get the passports released in a day or two v/s standard 20 business days line.

SMH!! Yes still waiting back to hear from the sentors office..now it's just a waiting game.

You should be fine BUT - pay to have your kids application sent via priority mail.

It will get through the mail system and to being processed much faster and be trackable. I just let my kids' renewals be sent via normal mail from the Post Office where we had the appointment with no special postage and have no idea where it is. Neither does state nor the USPS. Fortunately, we have no international travel expected in the next couple of months. Just checked today, almost exactly 4 weeks from application date of 3/15, and website still shows "status unavailable."

Is sending it via priority by the acceptance agent an option? It was never offered once.

This is true...I was stuck and today I did the privacy notice and they did an inquire and told me it will be shipping out by Friday with one day shipping and will arrive in time for my trip on the 29th of April

BUT. They got $78ish out of you for every passport. You were well past your 10 - 12 week estimate due to THEIR incompetence and should NOT have had to pay to expedite it.

Everyone who is calling in for expediting is getting their passports done in the next day or two so your senator actually did NOT do anything. Had they called it in citing you sent them in on 1/15 and they were stuck and NOT processed and therefore you need your passports without paying for expediting, then I'd believe your senator's office did anything for you.

When I sent mine for renewal I’m almost certain the instructions were to send it by a trackable method: Priority or Express Mail. The acceptance agent (usually a postal employee) should have known that.

It almost sounds as though the U.S. Department of State is “shaking down” passport applicants for more money. :confused:

I’m sure it’s more incompetence/sloth than malice.

The USPS employee processing our didn't offer it either and I forgot to ask. We need someone to try. I will try to find out next time I go to the PO in a few days.

Was your renewal application for your minor children? Because that is the specific situation I am referring to.

Yup. Incompetence. I get that with COVID, there are fewer employees and it would take longer than the usual 3 - 4 weeks. BUT. Why are the applications taking weeks to show up in the system and then 10 - 12 weeks on top? And if they indeed have low staffing levels, then as soon as you fork over the money, how is the passport getting approved, printed and mailed out in a mere day? Seems like they wait for you to break and pay and then its immediately processed.

No. I don'r have any children that I'm aware of.

The DS-82 instructions state "Because of the sensitivity of the enclosed documents, Passport Services recommends using trackable mailing service when submitting your application." I don't see that bit of advice in the DS-11 instructions. Was the cost of mailing included in the acceptance fee or did you have to pay that separately?

The online status updating for what's going on with US passport applications has always been weak in various ways IME. And the cost to do the fixes to make it wholly accurate would possibly come with an increase in passport fees because of it and even slower processing times.

Not talking about status updates. Just showing the application as received/processing like it shows today. Why does a person's application which was mailed on 1/15 take till late March to even show up in the system? And why it 10 - 12 weeks after that? Aren't the 10 - 12 weeks including transit times?

My application is in process, they can see it and tell me which passport agency is processing it when I call into the National passport information center and I was even given the passport application number and yet the online status system has not been updated to reflect that my application is in process, so that is just proof that their system is not reliable at all

I've learned from a very friendly agent at the NPIC how the process works which just adds to the ridiculousness and incompetence of the state department. The so called PO boxes where you mail your first time passport and passport renewal applications are nothing more than mailing facilities operating exclusively for the state department and are not open to the public. They have weeks if not months worth of applications there waiting to be opened and scanned into the system. Once your application is scanned into the system it is sent to a passport agency to be processed such as Charleston South Carolina, Minneapolis, New Hampshire etc etc. The actual processing since you are talking about an electronic image and file can be done in a matter of minutes, that is the reason why those who get their senators involved get their passports in a matter of 12 to 24 hours in some cases. So as you can see, if it weren't for the incompetence of the state department things realistically should not take more than 2 to 3 weeks but in reality 10 to 12 weeks is the norm, the system definitely needs a change

Child passports have to be done in person in front of an acceptance agent such as USPS. These applications are charged a $35 execution fee.

Acceptance agent sent the application in. Don’t know where they sent to or by what method or whether they sent everything they get in a single consolidated shipment or individual.

My issue was less with the passport agency’s status reporting and more with the USPS. The USPS tracking was fine until...

...which is still what I see when I enter the tracking number for my application even weeks after I received my new passport. :confused:

As do replacements for adult passports that were lost, stolen, or washed away in a hurricane storm surge, as I unfortunately know. I just couldn’t remember if I dropped the application in the mail back in March, 2011 or the acceptance agent at the Holbrook AZ post office did it for me.

Maybe I’m not following. If your application required handling by acceptable agent in person you would have paid the $35 fee separately. That agent would not have handed the application back to you for you to mail.

Applications that are handed into an acceptance facility such as the post office are mailed by the post office directly, you play no role in mailing them and they are usually mailed in a package together with all of the other applications collected during the day

As careful readers of this thread may have already figured out, the Irving, Texas, processing center seems to have returned to normal:

3/12/21: Mailed application by certified mail; did not pay to expedite
3/18/21: Application received (six days for an intra-Metroplex letter!)
3/19/21: Check cashed
4/13/21: Approved
4/15/21: New passport received

That's 34 days, less than five weeks, which is back to normal. I deliberately didn't expedite so as to avoid the Philadelphia processing center. I did, however, pay Walgreens $15 for a passport photo -- wasted money, I know. I also renewed early so as to avoid any "back to traveling" rush that might happen since my old passport was on its last couple of years anyway and since, conversely, a "no international travel" time like now is a good time to renew.

But, unfortunately, I've suffered the same fate as Kale73: my Global Entry personal information page won't accept the new passport number; all I get when I punch the "Save" button is an automated popup that says I have to visit an enrollment center in person. And, no, I most assuredly did NOT change my name! Did waiting a few days and trying again help your situation, Kale73, or am I just stuck with having to make an extra trip to DFW? Seems pretty pointless.

Hope this helps someone. And, Kale73, please let me know if you have any advice.

speak for yourself, my renewal application along with that of my wife has been sitting at the Irving texas mailing center for almost 4 weeks waiting to get into the system, you might have been lucky but operations are far from getting back to normal

My GE profile similarly didn’t take it right away. But I tried it again a week or so later and it worked

+1

I'm in the same boat as FallenPlat re TTP not accepting a new passport. I'm thinking the back end system only updates once or twice per month (unbelievable, right?) and am simply trying once per day to make my passport update on the TTP website. I'll report back as to the number of days it takes from the date a passport is issued to the date that TTP website will accept that new passport number.

Thanks for the input. I had also suspected that the government's back-end data synchronization procedures might not be exactly real time. I'll keep trying to update the Global Entry information page as well and report back.

As for the passport application, it's possible that Certified Mail, as opposed to Priority Mail, may have helped since certification requires essentially immediate manual processing in the form of a "received" signature or rubber stamp together with mailing back the little green postcard.

And for most people, by the way, the best way of knowing the fate of an application is seeing when the check is cashed through an online banking application. Everything else comes close to being just (inaccurate) noise, or at least that's what I think.

Passport card renewal update/correction:
Tue 1/26 First class certified mail sent from CA.
Mon 2/22 Delivered to Irving, TX, PO box
Wed 2/24 6am CST "In process" email from state.gov, estimate 10-12 weeks
Wed 2/24 $30 check cleared
Tue 4/06 7pm EDT "Approved" email from state.gov, estimate arrival Mon 4/12
Tue 4/06 11pm EDT "Mailed" email from state.gov, first class, 2 mailings
Sat 4/10 Passport card delivered, return address USG official mail, Portsmouth, NH 03801, no stamp, no postmark
Fri 4/16 Informed Delivery shows a mailing arriving today, return address DOS NPC, Sterling, VA, $0.51 frank says 4/12, ZIP 03801 (presumably old card)

Same...this seems all very hit and miss

Yet another minor passport application from me. This time I'd like speed so I requested all the possible improvements, speed-ups initially. We shall see how it fares.

April 17th.
Deposited expedited US passport application at USPS for a child with priority express mailing back and forth. The child doesn't have its federal name, i.e. SS identifier, so an additional paper attesting to this was also added. It was sent to Philadelphia.

I should add that it was not as straightforward as I thought to schedule a passport application appointment at a local post office for the next day. The local ones I checked were booked until Thursday next week at the earliest and I eventually, luckily found a slot in the suburbs not too far away. Unexpected obstacles all along the way!

I shall provide updates.

Our check cashed date is 3/24. They actually got the paperwork in PA on 3/7 per USPS delivery confirmation and took their sweet time to get the application scanned. Based on the number of days, it took them 17 business days from check cashed to approved for you.

For us, today is business day number 18. Our approval came at 3 AM on 3/24 so techincally, its business day number 19 for us. Lets see. :)

I'm getting super worried about my wife's passport renewal. We paid for expedited.

Mailed: 3/31/21
"Delivered" at Philly: 4/10/21

Today is 4/19/21 and still "Not Found" in the DOS status system. We have mandatory intl travel coming up on 6/1, and I'm starting to get nervous. Anyone know exactly when this thing is supposed to show up in the system? Is it 4-6wks from arriving at Philly, 4-6wks from mailing the application, or 4-6wks from "in process" in the system? Thanks much for the help!

Your questions are exactly why we have this thread.... it seems to vary greatly based upon to which processing location the application was sent. Some are being completely processed and returned in about 3 weeks while most others (like mine) are taking as much as 8 to 10 weeks. No way to know "exactly."

Just got our acceptance email(s). Also, the Senator's office notified us before the passport status site updated. We got the Senator's office email before the official emails. But, we did not get the Approved email. We only got the Shipped emails with tracking information.

3/04/21: Mailed application by Priority mail; did not pay to expedite. Mailed from Charlotte, NC to Philadelphia, PA
3/07/21: Application received in Philadelphia, PA
3/24/21: Application Status shows up as "Processing" and Check cashed
4/19/21: Approved / Shipped Notification
x/xx/21: New passport received

When did you contact the Senator's office and which state are you in?

Contacted them on April 5 as an emergency came up. Sent them the authorization the same night. It took them till 4/8 to get back a status that we had requested routine service. By then, we were told to NOT fly as India was getting worse by the day. So, on 8th we told them we won't be expediting the request which they were willing to do if we gave them our credit card or we could call the passport agency and expedite and then we were to call the senator's office back.

We're in Charlotte, NC.

Just got our acceptance email today, in total it took about 7 weeks (assuming the return priority mail is on time).
Passport book renewal, regular processing, didn't go through any special contact channels after mailing:

3/06/21 - Mailed from CT (USPS Priority Mail) to Philadelphia, PA processing center
4/05/21 - Got email notification from State Dept for "in-process"
4/06/21 - Check cashed
4/19/21 - Got email notification for "approved", second email ~2 hours later for "shipped" with tracking number
4/25/21 - Estimated delivery date

Sorry for the late reply. Yes, I was able to successfully update the GE information online the following week. How the sluggish USPS delivery system can outpace one government computer ‘talking’ to another government computer is perhaps one of life’s great mysteries.

you cannot rely on the online status system alone, it is up to each passport agency to update it and they don't always do so. I applied for a renewal March 18, Application delivered March 24 and up until now my status is still Not available, I called the National passport information center and they had my application in the system already, they told me which passport agency was processing my application and gave me an application locator number, so by all means call them and don't rely on the online system

This is great info - thank you for sharing.

I'm getting concerned that mine is still "in process" when you guys are getting things through. Mine has been "in process" since 3/17, with my check having been cashed on 3/18. Should I be worried that there has been absolutely no movement?

If you look at my timeline you’re 3 weeks behind me. On that speed you won’t hear anything until 4/27.