opaldog

Yes, I did do the standard renewal for $67. I'm hoping all is well for my applications which should be somewhere in Boston as I write this. As it turns out I did nothing wrong with the first try at renewing. I just had the bad luck of having my applications and passports vanish. I do hope someday to get back our old passports as they were stamped with all the places we have traveled in the past ten years.

DinPa

Sorry, I thought you were talking expedited. I posted earlier tonight that I sent my renewal (expedited)in on Monday, Sept. 10 and today Wednesday, Sept. 19 we received our new passports in the mail. I did use two separate checks though. Don't know if that would really make any difference. Hope you resolve your problem. Guess I got lucky.
Dave

opaldog

Dave- I too questioned the second time I sent the applications,whether to send one or two checks. My Congressman's office told me one check, so that is what I did. I triple and quadruple checked everything, being a bit paranoid at this point, and sent it off in the mail. My fingers are crossed.

opaldog

I woke up this morning and had an email that my passport has been mailed priority and that I should expect it on 9/25/07. I also was emailed a locator number. Sometime it does pay to contact your representatives office. This is actually the first time I have ever had to do that for any reason. So, I have to assume that barring any postal mistakes, we will receive our passports next week.

josephina

Fabulous!

opaldog

Thanks!

DinPa

glad things are working out for you.
dave

opaldog

I came home today after being away for one day and voila! the passports had arrived. Granted I'm out $20 for a stop payment charge by the bank and I don't have my old passport, but I can live with that. I am happy to have a passport. You never know when you might want to take advantage of a great travel deal. Moral of the story: if you are having passport problems seek out help from your elected officials.

AMYWISS

My two daughters sent in their first passport applications through our local post office. We didn't pay the extra charges for quicker service and both their passports showed up TWO weeks later at our home. So far only one of their birth certificates have been returned in a separate envelope but I was pleasantly shocked at how quickly they came.

phyllis_stein

Good to hear a (reasonably) happy ending to opaldog's story.

I have a question, based on this and several other passport threads. What method should I use to send in an application?

When I brought the required documents to our post office's Passport Office for my husband's renewal, they didn't require any postage fees, just took the application and everything else, and said "You're all set!" Is this because the office has a passport facility? It's almost time to renew my own, and I think I may want a little bit more in the way of delivery confirmation, given all I've read on Fodors....

AMYWISS

For my husband's passport renewal, we just sent it in, regular mail and he received the new one in about 8 weeks. I mailed it with 2 41 cent stamps on it. My daughters were getting theirs for the first time so the USPS person witnessed their ID's and said he would ship them. I didn't give him any extra postage. Now I've mailed mine in for renewal with regular postage and hopefully won't be waiting for more that 6-8 weeks either. I paid $67 each for our renewals and for the girls I paid $67 each and $30 each to the USPS for their service.

opaldog

I still have not received my old passports and don't expect to ever see them again. I mailed them as I stated earlier, regular mail with no receipt. That was the post office's recommendation and when I mailed the application in the second time the recommendation by my rep.'s office was the same. The person I dealt with in that office said in no terms to request a return receipt.

Christina

They've had some news reports recently that supposedly they are over the backup and the time is back to normal, about 6 weeks.

I've never gone to a post office to renew a passport, I just mail it in myself. There is no reason to go there, although I guess if you don't have to pay the postage, that's something. Maybe, it wouldn't be to me as I hate my local post office and you'd have to wait in line forever, they don't even have parking available so you may have to walk a block or so. (I live in a small town and the post office is on the main street and doesn't have a parking lot). Anyway, I would never trust my local post office to send it correctly over myself. I just always try to cut out middlemen from transactions who don't do anything, more chances for things to go wrong.

There are various types of delivery that you can get delivery receipts for (certified mail or something) by regular mail, but they cost, of course. Certified mail receipts are around $2 (confirmation of delivery).

phyllis_stein

Thanks for your advice; at least I have plenty of time before I go overseas again. I hope I don't have any sagas to report.

(As a quick aside to Christina, if you're still reading: I've always appreciated your posts, especially about Paris. It must be about 8 years ago I was asking about sacred music in Paris, and you doubted my screen name was my real name. You're the only poster who has ever commented on it. And you're right....)

Vttraveler

It is possible to check online to be sure the passport application has arrived. The information on the State Dept. website says this information should show up about 10 days after you mail the application.
http://travel.state.gov/passport/get...atus_2567.html

I did this for my son's application in September and was able to confirm it had arrived and was being processed. His passport (which was considered a new application because he is 16 and could not simply renew the passport he had as a child) arrived in 3 1/2 weeks regular processing.

josephina

Vttraveler: I posted above on this very same item and since we are now so far down the thread, so to speak, it bears repeating. I'm glad the Confirmation URL worked for you. It did not for me.

The confirmation URL NEVER listed my passport or my daughter's passport into the system. We received our passports quite quickly--no complaints here!--but the processing URL never registered us.

In addition, several days AFTER we received my daughter's passport, she received a postcard saying, "your passport is being processed" with a statement that it would arrive soon. Although I received my passport a few days after her, I never received a similar postcard.

So the Confirmation URL sounds good in theory, but in practice, has not been reliable. I am thrilled, however, that it took almost no time to get our renewals.

adeben

This is not meant to be criticism: just a naive query, I guess. I can renew my Australian Passport ONLINE. There is a website where you can make such a request and the details you enter are checked against the national data base, and thus verified or not, as the case may be. The procedure is much quicker and more efficient than the previous one, of which the US one mentioned above is reminiscent. The USA invented the Internet, and most of the protocols used therein. How come you don't use the Internet for this purpose?

Vttraveler

josephina--I am not surprised the tracking system does not always work properly. I know people tried to use it over the summer when proof of application was allowed for travelers flying from Canada and Mexico

My son also got a postcard confirming his application had been received the day before the actual passport arrived.

I think there has been a big, largely successful, effort to get processing times down. I know the Bush administration is very invested in implementing the Western Hempisphere Travel Initiative which requires passports for land and sea travel effective early 2008. This is very controversial in states along the Canadian border as it is expected to hurt tourism and business. We go back and forth to Canada quite often because our older son is studying at McGill and I was very nervous about getting our younger son's passport renewed on time.

Abeden--the main reason for the US processing system we are all describing is a belief it is more secure than an online data check. I think in the case of passport renewals by mail it works pretty much the same way except that the old passport has to be turned in and is returned with holes punched through the cover and a big stamp saying "cancelled"