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