Renewing US passports overseas
 

I don't know how much of what I am going to post here applies only to Israel and how much is true everywhere, but if you are an American ex-pat it is worth checking into.

My U.S. passport expires in December. My daughter has another year on hers, but as she recently married, she decided to both change her name and renew her passport at the same time.

The U.S. Consulates in both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, say that if your old passport was issued for a 10 year period, is less than 15 years old, and is in good physical condition you can not make an appointment to have it renewed. Instead, you must download the forms, and mail them to your preferred consulate. They also suggest using a courier service and not the Israeli Postal Service's regular system. (The Postal Service has a special courier system but it is not offered in most post offices, you have to search for it).

The price for the passport is $110, but must be paid for by a cashier's check, in U.S. dollars. Personal checks and credit cards, even if issued by American banks, are not acceptable. They will not mail your new passport back to you but insist on using a courier service (which costs 49 shekels ($15), saying that the regular post is too slow. They also say that it will take 5 weeks from the time they receive your application until you get the passport delivered.

My daughter went to her bank to get two checks for $110 each, but her bank did not like the idea of making cashier checks in foreign (US) currency and made her wait 45 minutes to get the first check and told her she would have to come back the next day to get the second one. Once she had them, she immediately sent them (by the courier system) and on Tuesday (about two weeks after she mailed our applications out), I received an e-mail from the consulate saying that it has received my new passport and I will be contacted by the courier system within 14-21 days. As it turned out, the courier service sent me an SMS yesterday telling me to pay the 49 shekels to have it delivered to my house. It allowed me to do it by credit card and told me I will be contacted in two-three days to set a day for it to be delivered. My daughter has not heard back about her passport at all, possibly because it also involved a change in her name.

In short, if you are an ex-pat whose passport will be expiring soon, do not wait until the last minute, or even the last month, to try to renew it. Ironically, I will probably never travel again on my American passport. I am not planning on flying to the States and when going to Europe I can use my Israeli passport. The only reason I renewed it is that I have considerable assets in the US which my children will inherit and KYC regulations have gotten so strict in the past few years that expired passports are no longer considered valid identification by most banks and brokerages. I just want to make the process easier for them when I kick the bucket.

Sounds like you get a bad deal in Israel. I've twice renewed in Shanghai and the process is relatively painless. Get an appointment, go and show them your old passport and submit the new passport forms and make the payment. They let you keep your old passport to use as the new one is being processed. About 2-3 weeks later they send you an email saying to come pick up your new passport and you go pick it up and get holes punched in the old one. Pretty simple.

I've renewed my passport while living/working in Vietnam, Egypt, Qatar, and China. Never had any issues.

I have renewed my passport several times in Israel (I moved here in 1979) and never had any of the complications I mentioned in the OP. In Israel, at least, this seems to be something new. I don't know if the same applies in other countries.

It appears that the US embassies are going to a non-appointment renewal (due to COVID) and requiring you to renew by mail. This has recently been changed in Cyprus, but I have not tried it yet as my passport does not expire until 2023. Just as well as it is a royal pain in the a$$ to go to the embassy. They do allow you to send a check in euros but who know how much the greedy Cyprus banks will charge for a cashiers check. And you have to include a stamped self-addressed envelope when you send in the application so that they can return your new passport.

Does anyone know how long it takes to get a renewal overseas on an emergency basis if one is running out of pages while traveling? Can one generally put in an application and get a new passport within a day or tw:confused:? (Most likely place for this would be Dubai.)

If you are traveling and have an issue you need to make an appointment with the Embassy/consulate. They will be able to tell you your options.