passport angst
 

How many of you are nervous about receiving your passport in a timely fashion? I sent my husband's and my passports to the office in Philadelphia to have Visa pages added & at the time I didn't know about the backlog. I need them back soon in order to get Visas for our trip to Russia. We are scheduled to leave June 9th.

Most of my friends that needed a Russian visa for work have said that it takes between 4-6 weeks in their hands before you see your passport again.If you don't see your passports by the third week of April-I would start looking for them. Good luck!

For comparison - I sent my renewal in (regular mail) on March 6th. I paid for "expedited" service. Using the passport services' web status checking page, I didn't even see that it had been received until March 29th. But then it suddenly showed as being in progess, and in two business days it arrived in on 4/2 in a priority mail package.

Last July, I had to apply for a passport for my four week old daughter - I paid for expedited service and received passport in less than a week and a half. No problems at all - there is a telephone number on the passport website that you can call with your social security number and they will tell you exactly where in the process you are.

Somewhat off topic, BUT,

In the future, for anybody that needs extra pages in their passport and happens to be in a major foreign city where US Embassy/Consulate is located - then take few hours off from your vacation and have it done there.

First advantage - it's free

Second advantage - it's usually done within an hour or two or at the very worst, it's ready for pick up next day.

Third advantage - it's never handled by third party. You and US consular official(s) are the only people handling it.

Finally, even if you still have few pages left but many more years to go on the expiration date and you travel a great deal, then the above recommandation is the way to go as soon as you get to a foreign location. After all, it's free....:-D

Happy travels!

I took my five-year-old to the post office here on 20March to have her passport renewed. Paid a small fortune for expedited service, as we leave in May, and I was afraid that we wouldn't have it in hand, but still warned that it would be the middle of April before we got it. It came this past Saturday (31March) in a Priority Overnight envelope :)

Interesting. Mine expires in November, but I have no immediate plans ... still, Argentina is a possibility within the next 12 months.

You have me forewarned, and I'll watching for developments.

Yep, while there is a backlog, it appears that currently, they are handling the expedited requests very quickly. We renewed my BFs and it was less than a week from the time we sent it in and the time we received it back.

On another note, back in 2002 I had to renew my passport with about 6 weeks notice. I paid to expedite it. It was NOT expdited. It arrive the day before my trip. Scary.

Marsh-I'm not sure when you sent yours in, but as a point of reference, I mailed my passport for new visa pages a little over four weeks ago and have not received it back yet. I'm not traveling until mid-June, and I was able to obtain my visa electronically (Australia), so I'm not worried at the moment.

Also, I used an agency to obtain my Russian visa a couple of years ago. I let them know that I needed the passport back promptly for another trip--it took about 2.5 weeks from the time I mailed it to California until I had it back in my hands. Nevertheless, I probably wouldn't wait too long before calling to check on the passport. Good luck!

Hi M,

IIRC, you can call the passport office and have your paperwork expeditied if you are within 2 weeks of the date that you will need it.

Also ask your Member of Congress to help.

((I))

Yahoo is my default page when I log on...news report this morning (Wednesday) issued by the State Department that they are just about caught up and prepared to do the expidited requirements again...

If there is any question about getting your passport back in time for your trip, you can go into the nearest MAJOR passpost office and pay the expedited fee to have it walked through the same day. We have done this with various friends at Miami, DC, New York and San Francisco. Once I had packed our own passports by mistake and not remembering which bag they were in we stopped on the way to the airport and walked our new ones through in 4 hours.

I also read the article on Yahoo. They are supposedly about caught up with the expedited applications and should be able to complete processing within a 2-week timeframe again, but regular applications are still taking 10 weeks. Hopefully, they'll start focusing on getting the regular applications caught up. I submitted my application on March 3rd at the post office and it's still not showing up on the website (4.5 weeks later) despite the website's statement that regular applications should now be showing up within 3 weeks. My trip isn't until May 28th, so I'm not in a panic yet, but will be soon if that website doesn't change. I really don't want to make a trip to Houston at the last minute.

Oh, and I tried calling the 800 number to ask about the delay in having it show up on the website and whatever set of options I chose resulted in a greeting that went something like "Thanks for calling. We are too busy to help you. Your options are to check the website or call back later. Goodbye." Gotta love that. I wish I could put something like that on my voicemail at work..."Hi. You've reached my voicemail. I'm too busy to take your call at this time. Your options are to hang up and call back later to get this same message or just don't call back at all. Love ya...Bye."

We ended up calling our Congressman last year after a long delay and we received the passport the next day overnight!! Our trip was 10 days away and the passport had been there 8 weeks. This was March of 2006 when it was only taking 4-6 weeks. We tried to expedite after we had initially sent it in (like the website says) but they wouldn't say if they could do that or not. I made numerous calls and e-mails. I highly recommend calling your Congressman if deadlines get tight. Good luck!

This is Marsh again! Thanks to everyone who replied. I was able to speak to a pleasant lady on the phone at the National Passport Center at 6:50 a.m. CDT yesterday. She said my info is not in their system yet. (The P.O. confirmation stated it was received March 16th.) She said there is nothing they can do until it "shows up" in the system. That makes me nervous. I plan to call my Congressman, but I wonder if they will be able to help if I am "not in the system". I live way too far from a passport agency to go to one. I do plan to use the Visa agency recommended by our tour company if & when I get the passports back!

Why do so many countries have inefficient passport agencies? Here in South Africa passports are a bit of a joke. I have one fortunately valid for eight more years but my son and his family have recently applied and can expect to wait 6 to 8 weeks. What is so complicated in putting a passport together or am I missing something? I cannot believe that thousands of passport applications are received every day!!

I was worried about the passport issue as well. My son decided last minute to go with us to France and had to rush to get his photo and passport application in. Paid for expedited service and he received his passport in 2 weeks to the day! What a relief! I checked on line daily at this link https://passportstatus.state.gov/opss/OPSS_Status_i.asp and was able to get confirmation that it was processed and in the mail after 1 1/2 weeks. I honestly don't know whether the Visa issue would delay the processing though.

Marsh: Do keep us posted on how this works out. Maybe I am too commited to this site but I can't tell you how many times someone will ask a question like this and then just leave us hanging, never really knowing how it all turned out. It's like one of those old serial shows with the cliffhanger but nobody comes back to finish the story. I may find myself asking, "I wonder what ever happend to Marsh's passport and did her husband ever get it back in time for their trip to Russia?" on some sleepless night two years from now. Gee, maybe I need to get a life, huh?

Rd, I don't know what's up in most countries, but in the US our travel regulations were changed last year requiring a passport for travel to places previously accessible without: certain Caribbean countries, for instance. Suddenly everybody and his brother and sister rushed off to get a passport, and the backlog was begun.

Maybe it also has something to do with more and more college students taking off to more distant places for school breaks - when I was in school a trip to ski in Colorado or the beach in Florida was the optimum. Now it's Belize, Paris, Rio - you name it.

But it does seem the bureaucracy should be able to gear up to the need.

When I checked the website today, it finally showed that I am in the system! It has been 4 weeks since they received our passports.