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Current US passport wait? (Merged Threads)

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Old Mar 1, 2022, 6:35 am
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Passport Agency Appointments (same day expedited service)
Appointments for same-day expedited service often go quickly. It is best that you schedule your appointment with the passport agency exactly 14 days before your trip. You will want to call the passport number before the center opens at 8am EST as they will have just opened up one day (14 days out) of appointments at all agencies. Appointment times start at 8am. It is important that you have enough buffer in your travel schedule. For example, if you make an appointment for a new passport at 11am and your time of travel is at 2pm, there will not be enough time for you to get your passport. If you book the 8am slot you may have to wait until the end of the business day to get your new passport or it may only be a few hours.

You will want to have your date of travel, time of travel, your flight itinerary number, name of destination, full name of applicant, and applicant's birth city, and the zip code of where you live (to help them find the closest available center with open slots). Use the following steps to increase your chances of success to booking an appointment as they can go very quickly:
  1. 14 days before your trip, you need to schedule an appointment with the passport agency.
  2. At 7:55 am call the passport number 877-487-2778 (This have to be exactly 14 days before your plane ticket or less. If less, it will get harder to find an appointment)
  3. Click 1 (For English)
  4. Click 2 (New Passport)
  5. Continue to Click 7 to repeat, and keep doing this while watching your watch or using Time.gov to get the exact time down to the second.
  6. When your it hits exactly 8:00 am Click 2 (for traveling within 14 days option)
  7. There will be a delay of 3-4 second and you will wait for the next available agent. If you are very lucky, you will be put straight through to an agent. You may be waiting few minutes or maybe as long as 15-20 minutes.
  8. If you did not click 1 exactly at 8 am, you may have to wait for more than an hour and half
After the appointment slot has been reserved you will be provided with a unique identifier code and reservation number. These details will also be emailed to you.

Credit: chgoeditor

Known office locator numbers (not complete)
Note: The office code (first two digits of your application locator number returned by Passport Status) is the office reviewing your documents and approving your application. It isn't necessarily the address you mailed the forms to (always Irving or Philadelphia for renewals) nor the facility where the book is physically printed and mailed (often Tucson or Hot Springs).

10: Boston
11: NYC
12: Honolulu
14: Stamford, CT
15: Portsmouth, NH
17: Aurora, CO
18: Chicago
19: Washington, DC
20-29: Portsmouth, NH
34-39: Charleston
40-42: New Orleans, LA
45: Portsmouth, NH
50: Los Angeles, CA
51: Miami
53: Seattle
54: Minneapolis
55: Dallas
56: Detroit
57: San Francisco
58: Philadelphia, PA
61-64: Tucson
65: Hot Springs, AR
67: San Juan, PR
68: Portsmouth, NH
69: Portsmouth, NH
71: US embassies/consulates abroad (possibly Portsmouth, NH)
74: Atlanta
75: St Albans, VT
76: San Diego, CA
77: Buffalo, NY
78: El Paso, TX
79: Houston, TX
80: Special Issuance Agency ("Issues diplomatic, official, service, and no-fee regular passports, and facilitates visa processing for those traveling on behalf of the U.S. government.")
95: Online

A list of agencies and their locator numbers is listed on this page under the heading, "List of passport agencies and centers with locator numbers."

H/T Nayef, txviking, and various individual posts both here and on Reddit. If you have a locator not in the above list, check the return address agency name or postmark/ZIP on your returned citizenship docs, or passport card if you applied for one, which may be the processing office, although the address itself is likely to be a PO Box in Sterling, VA in all cases (which appears to be a lockbox location that processes mail for all locations). The passport books are printed in fewer locations, often Hot Springs and Tucson, and may not correspond to the agency where the processing steps occurred. If it doesnt match the list above, please add or correct.
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Current US passport wait? (Merged Threads)

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Old Sep 29, 2020 | 9:08 pm
  #766  
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I applied at a consulate yesterday for a renewal. They said it would take 2-3 weeks for me to get the new passport. I'll update the actual timeline once I receive the new one.
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Old Sep 30, 2020 | 3:08 am
  #767  
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Originally Posted by travelinmanS
I applied at a consulate yesterday for a renewal. They said it would take 2-3 weeks for me to get the new passport. I'll update the actual timeline once I receive the new one.
One of the US embassies to which I've been by in recent days in Europe took 11-12 business days for the applicant's passport to get back for pick-up. And that was about 2-5 business days more than what I was seeing there in say January or at this time last year.

Originally Posted by Section 107
Does anybody have experience to relate for renewal for a minor?
See my words above.

Where/how are you planning to apply? I generally try to minimize use of a non-State facility as the application acceptance agent if I can help it -- and I would avoid it more so in this era when the USPS is messed up more than usual.

Originally Posted by SJCFlyerLG
I'll take you up on that. I'll call and ask when I get it if I do nothing else, and when I get it if I pay the $60 extra. My bet is that they will say they can't say.
If I were in your situation, I would not pay the expedite fee at this point even if they said it would get the passport back 3-10 days earlier than is possibly the case already.

Last edited by GUWonder; Sep 30, 2020 at 3:17 am
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Old Sep 30, 2020 | 8:25 am
  #768  
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Updated: Friend called again on Monday and they said she could pay the $60 expedited fee and if they could get it expedited, then they'd charge the card, otherwise, they wouldn't. Yesterday they got notification he'll have his passport on Friday. So about 8-9 weeks (not sure if she got charged the expediting fee or not).
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Old Sep 30, 2020 | 9:38 am
  #769  
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Originally Posted by GUWonder
See my words above.

Where/how are you planning to apply? I generally try to minimize use of a non-State facility as the application acceptance agent if I can help it -- and I would avoid it more so in this era when the USPS is messed up more than usual.

.
was expecting to use the local post office but may take your advice and do it at the DC Passport Agency.
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Old Sep 30, 2020 | 11:44 am
  #770  
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Originally Posted by Section 107
was expecting to use the local post office but may take your advice and do it at the DC Passport Agency.
I'm not sure it's a viable option.

Passport Agencies - September 28, 2020 Update
All of our agencies and centers are processing passport applications. To prevent the spread of COVID-19 and protect our workforce and customers, we currently are limiting in-person appointments at our agencies and centers to customers who are traveling internationally in the next 72 hours (3 business days) due to a life-or-death emergency. You must make an appointment.
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Old Sep 30, 2020 | 2:55 pm
  #771  
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A friend of mine got his from a US mission abroad, received it back last week, had put it in 8 days before.
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Old Sep 30, 2020 | 3:31 pm
  #772  
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Originally Posted by Section 107
was expecting to use the local post office but may take your advice and do it at the DC Passport Agency.
Depending on if and where the child is outside of the US, the turnaround is quite often less than 15 business days nowadays when using State's facilities outside of the US. This is about 4-7 business days worse than what I've frequently seen (in prior years) at embassies in cities with pretty convenient flight schedules to the US.

State's facilities inside the US aren't necessarily as readily available for such quick turns since there's the issue of whether or not the applicant is even qualified for in-person services with State's own people as application acceptance agents at such facilities.

Speaking of passport acceptance by say the USPS's passport application acceptance staff or other contracted acceptance agents, make sure to double check that you've done the proverbially dotting of the i's and crossing of the t's for the DS-11 application nowadays before they say you're good to go. You don't want the application to be hung up because an acceptance agent got something wrong, since then you may be stuck with finding out via a letter or email that they need a fix from your side before they can issue the passport. Those kind of mistakes will drag things out.
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Old Oct 1, 2020 | 1:08 pm
  #773  
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Renewal by mail -- extra large book and passport card

Mailed from Berkeley, Cal.: July 30 [applications from California go to Texas processing center]
Check cashed: Aug. 10
"In process" status when I logged in to check: late Aug.
Email that my application is "in process": Sep. 26 [I had requested email alert on the website]
Email that my application was approved: Sep. 28
Received in the mail: Oct. 1

Nothing unusual about my application or my travels in the last decade.
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Old Oct 1, 2020 | 6:18 pm
  #774  
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Mine expires next August.

Since I'm not using it for travel, it might be nice to get it done now.

I think the State Dept. site says you can apply for renewal 9 months before?
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Old Oct 1, 2020 | 9:25 pm
  #775  
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Now seems like a really good time to renew (if you're eligible). They've worked through the backlog and it's unlikely we'll see any surge in applications in the next couple of months. But down the road, as the end of the pandemic nears, there might be a big surge in applications.
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Old Oct 2, 2020 | 1:17 am
  #776  
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Originally Posted by exp
Mine expires next August.

Since I'm not using it for travel, it might be nice to get it done now.

I think the State Dept. site says you can apply for renewal 9 months before?
If that is said anywhere, it's not been universal in application.

Over many years, including earlier this year, I've seen US passports sent in with renewal applications where the passports had years and years left on them before the expiration date. And the applicants were issued new passports. One such application where the renewal was issued for an applicant whose submitted passport wasn't expiring for several years literally had it done this year because the bearer didn't like the printed date of issue on the passport as it was a reminder of a bad day. And I have a lot of other examples of renewal passports being issued for people whose submitted passports weren't expiring for years and years and yet had other reasons -- from the trivial to the very material -- to renew years in advance of the printed expiration date.
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Old Oct 2, 2020 | 11:27 am
  #777  
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Originally Posted by exp
I think the State Dept. site says you can apply for renewal 9 months before?
That's their suggested time for renewal, but I don't see any prohibition on renewing it earlier. In fact, those who run out of pages for visas must renew their passports now that they've stopped issuing extra pages, and that could be years before expiration.

Can I get extra visa pages for my passport?

No, you cannot. Applicants who need additional pages in their valid passports must obtain a new passport by mail. Applicants within the United States may choose a 28-page or 52-page book.
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Old Oct 2, 2020 | 1:10 pm
  #778  
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So would they renew it for the 10 years from when you renew early or 10 years from when it would have expired?

Say it expires in June next year and I renew now. Would it be 10 years from say November or December or 10 years from June?
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Old Oct 2, 2020 | 1:14 pm
  #779  
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Originally Posted by exp
So would they renew it for the 10 years from when you renew early or 10 years from when it would have expired?

Say it expires in June next year and I renew now. Would it be 10 years from say November or December or 10 years from June?
Ten years from the date of issue.
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Old Oct 2, 2020 | 1:50 pm
  #780  
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Originally Posted by TWA884
Ten years from the date of issue.
Yes, the downside of renewing early is you lose any time that remained on your old passport. No credit on the new one for that.
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