From everything that I have read getting an appointment is nearly impossible.

Very limited numbers, and those that are out there are being grabbed in bulk and being sold for hundreds of dollars per appointment. Which is disgusting.

Yes. A friend did so last week, and got the passport the following day. The strategy was to check the appointments website every hour, 24 hours a day, until a cancellation popped up. Takes a bit of effort but it's do-able.

There is an up post, s/he saw a non-appointment line at passport office. If you do not live far away from a passport office, you may wish to give it a try. Be there before that office opens.

I don't think the appointment system will allow you to just make a non-urgent (outside of 72hrs prior to travel) appointment, as you need to indicate your date of travel. Mind you, I never saw an open appointment in all my refreshing of the appointment system - but it was my impression that I the only available appointments to me (if there were to be any) would be for 72hrs prior to travel. This was somewhat confirmed when I got the appointment from my congressperson - my appointment was for a Wednesday morning and we departed on Saturday.

This is true, seems that you need to be very lucky to snatch an open appointment. But grabbed "in bulk" - whaaat? Where have you heard/seen this??

May have been my post - can't remember if I mentioned that here or over on the huge Reddit thread. At any rate, yes it appeared that at the Miami office there was a separate room/line for folks who didn't have an appointment - as when I got off the elevator, the first question from the security guard was "Do you have an appointment?" Since I did, I was allowed into the next room, but there was a line of folks formed in a separate area that I'm assuming were folks without an appointment. Good luck!

There is a gray market to buy passport agency/center appointments from individuals who have freely booked up some appointment spots and are trying to profit on demand for appointments by selling or even reselling appointment slots.

The State Department isn’t happy about this, but it is what it is and people are still doing this unless and until the government figures out what to do with this situation.

Some passport centers/agencies are somewhat easier to land an appointment for free than most others, but then there is the issue on how to get the applicant/application there.

“I mean, there are people that are going in there and taking three and four appointments and then trading them or selling them or giving them to other people,” said Stovall.

In a statement to NBC 5, The U.S. Department of State wrote,

"We are aware of these issues and are working to prevent them. The Department of State does not charge a fee solely for booking an emergency appointment at one of our agencies or centers. Any request of payment for scheduling a U.S. passport appointment should be considered fraudulent. Further, the department is not affiliated with any third-party appointment booking services, and we have seen numerous instances of falsified appointment bookings through these vendors. We may not be able to honor appointments booked via third parties."

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/nbc-5-re...-dept/2683574/

I found that I misplaced my passport in June so filled out the form for lost passport, made an appointment at my post office on June 15, applied on that day and sent the passport card back along with two checks for the passport and expedited.

Starting to get a little anxious, though still am pretty hopeful that our trip will go forward.

We have a tour of Greece planned with our air flights leaving on August 12. We just passed the 30 day window to cancel and get a full credit of over $4,000 for each of the two of us.

The trip is three weeks from this coming Thursday. Applied June 15. It was put into processing very quickly:

Application Status: In Process

The U.S. Department of State has received your application for your passport book and card on 06/18/2021. We're now reviewing your application and supporting documents.

You requested expedited service when you applied, which we are currently processing within 6 weeks. Our processing times do not include mailing times, which could add 6 weeks to the door-to-door time.

Your application locator number is XXXXXXX.

Contacted my representative and his staff is working on it. The contact person has been great. Apparently he had to contact them three times as they sent a form letter saying that I had opted for regular processing instead of expedited. The website always showed expedited and I had sent copies of that along with my airplane tickets showing the needed date to the representative.

I had not paid for overnight but two days ago contacted them and filled out the form requesting that they charge me the $18 and overnight.

Six weeks that they say they are processing by will be the 30th of this month. So like I said I feel somewhat optimistic, but will be anxious until the passport is in my hands. Just seeing it go from processing to approved would be wonderful. I check several times a day.

Thank You, we did pay for tracking.

We applied on 4/22, didn't get to processing until 6/8...still waiting and we travel this Saturday.....

I applied April 22nd.....Still no passports and we are supposed to Travel 7/24.

Did you expedite? If not you could have called and upgraded to expedite.

The only chance that you have at this point is to call your congressperson and see if they can secure you a last minute meeting to get a passport within three days of travel.

Hi everyone, thought I'd share my experience renewing my passport to help alleviate some anxiety.

- Application sent out 6/18 to the Pennsylvania facility from Kendall County, IL. Photo taken and application was looked over by a post office worker. Requested expedited service.
- Arrived 6/22, check cashed and went into processing 6/23
- Passport received 7/19, from the processing facility in Arkansas (apparently this facility gets passports processed really fast)

A few things to note:

- According to the official status page, my application is still 'in process' even though I have the new one in hand.
- Just out of curiosity I wanted to see if I could get an appointment somewhere in the midwest. I was able to make an appointment (now canceled) for the Minneapolis processing location at around 6am several days in a row.
- Informed delivery lets you know approximate date passport will be delivered, some USPS locations allow you to pick up the package before its delivered.

Best of luck to everyone.

Has anyone tried going to a passport office without an appointment recently?

Which office is processing your application?

We are in the same boat; a lost passport reported and application in on 6/29, along with a trip to Greece planned for Aug 18th. It's been in process since 7/6, and we contacted congress-person last week. Good luck!

Update that might give you some hope:

The Houston Office just telephoned. They did not have the DS-64 form that I filled out online when I applied on June 15. Nor did they have my passport card which I surrendered to the post office when filing on June 15. But were very helpful. I followed the nice man's instructions, and filled out a hard copy of another DS-64, signed the form, sent the form along with a check for the 17.56 for them to overnight and a letter explaining the situation and having spoken to them, by overnight mail to Houston. They should have it tomorrow. He assured me that once in hand they would issue my passport.

Hope that this helps you and that your situation resolves. I will completely believe that mine does when I have the passport in hand. Hopefully by the end of this week, I will update here.

The very best of luck. I certainly know how stressful this is for you.

That's very good news! We also filled out the DS-64 form online so I hope there isn't a glitch in the system. We haven't heard from any Passport office yet but hopefully soon. Cheers!

This may be a silly question, though I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, and I know most of you have already applied. But I noticed that there are hand-written passport applications in addition to ones generated by the passport wizard after filling out the info online. The latter application generates a barcode on the top left part of the first page. I'll post photos to illustrate the differences. My question is: do you think that sending out the application from the online wizard with the barcode makes processing it faster? I would think that the barcode contains all the info, which means they wouldn't have to type it by hand.
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...349603b2fc.png
DS-11 generated from online wizard with barcode
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...ac3842d1fd.png
DS-11 pdf to be filled out by hand (no barcode)

The barcode allows f:star:ster processing because the data should already be in the system when the form is received and the barcode is scanned vs. having to have OCR read it or having to have someone type it in from the manually filled form.

That's what I'm thinking, too. I'm wondering if it does actually have a notable impact on processing times but I don't think there are stats for that.

Yes. Additionally online filled form with a barcode eliminates error/s.

Is there a reason you do not wish to or unable to fill out this form online?

No reason at all. I'm just surprised that more people aren't doing it online. Probably would've saved a lot of time and I'm wondering what percentage of backlogged applications have the barcodes. The only thing that would give me some pause is that the online generated forms and the ones at the post offices have 2019 as their expiration dates, but it still seems like they're using them. Meanwhile, the new DS-11 PDF has 2023 as the expiration date. I'd still go for the one generated online with the barcode nevertheless in the hope that the State Department doesn't suddenly change the forms or mandate the new ones by the time I'm (hopefully) able to apply.

It should eliminate OCR scanning errors and delays stemming from that and manual entry of information due to scanning failures. I doubt it is any faster than a clean scan, though.

I did mine using the assisted entry and have a barcode. I'll report back on the time it actually took.

Since any process involving human intervention, which OCR typically does, has the greatest potential for inducing errors, I will always use whatever method offers the least incidence of human involvement.

Yes, the barcode is specific to your application, so it would speed things along. Also, there's notation discouraging you from making corrections once the barcode form is printed out.

Yep. Although annoyingly, the acceptance facility I went to insisted on making handwritten changes anyway. They insisted listing an emergency contact was mandatory.

I'm guessing that'll add even more delay as the data will now have to be entered manually.

UPDATE!
Both of our State Senators offices did as promised. The first one requested a rush in the inquiry and the second Senator was able to email me last night with an update which said the passport would be mailed no later than today. We ended up cancelling our trip due to the uncertainty of when the passport would arrive and to get the full refund and be able to rebook for next month. I kept checking the site only for the status to still say “processing”. Guess what popped up in the mail today? Yep, the passport 😒 Status is still at processing. Our trip was supposed to be 7/24 so in all that was about 5 weeks for us which isn’t bad. Wish the status system was accurate.

Good luck all!

@MyeshiaQ Glad you received the passport and refund. Sucks that you had to cancel your trip. Thank you for the update!

Three weeks is almost miraculous given the current delays.

Update!
 

7/21: Received an email that my passport status is now 'Approved' and is expected to arrive by July 27th.

6/21 Sent Expedited 1-2 to PA and purchased the 1-2 day delivery
6/24 Processing
7/21 Approved and should receive by 7/24

Total time 4 weeks and 5 days from day I sent to the day it "should" arrive.

"Up to 12 weeks" and it's taking a little over 4 weeks. I'm seriously think the Dept of State is using some kind of scare tactic to get people to pay for expedited service.

Does the passport tracking website mention which office your passports are being processed in?

The first 2 digits of your passport locator number corresponds to the office it is processing at.

UPDATE:

Application sent 6/21
USPS shows delivered 6/22
Application in process email received 6/25
Check cashed 6/28
Email received that passport is ready and shipped: 7/21
ETA: 7/24

33 days from start to end including mailing times. Didn't have to call a senator for help.

Website now down with a message saying people were using bots!

wow congratulations!
Had you reached out to a representative?
I sent my application on 6/24 so your timeline gives me hope.

How do you know what number corresponds to what office? Mine starts with “61”.

It appears my passport was just approved! Timeline:

4/19: Applied in person at a courthouse in Florida
5/19: Email from DoS showing application "In Process" as of the day before (passportstatus.state.gov also updated a day late)
7/22: Email from DoS showing application approved

The U.S. Department of State approved your application for your passport book and card. We're now printing your passport book and card and preparing to give it to you.

You requested routine service when you applied, which we are currently processing within 12 weeks. You should receive your passport book and card on or around 07/28/2021.

I did NOT pay for expedited service; however, I did reach out to my Representative's office, as I had heard they can help speed things along. While the message says I should receive my passport book and card on 7/28, my Representative actually sent me back a tracking number showing that it was mailed out on 7/20 (two days before the approval notice) and will arrive on 7/23 (five days before the estimated arrival time.) What's also interesting is that it's coming from Arkansas, even though my locator code indicates New Hampshire.

Thanks! No never reached out to anyone.