We're about 20 days away from our trip to Italy, and only 3 of our 4 passports are here. I'm so totally kicking myself for not going the "expedited" route when we applied over 10 weeks ago. I'd spend the $60 to go for the expedited service in a nanosecond right now. But we were assured by the person at the Post Office that we were fine just going with the standard service. Big, big sigh.
I've already been in contact with our congressman's office, and they were going to try to get us the status of the passport. I was told to give them a couple of business days. So I will be contacting them tomorrow.
The passport is question is actually a renewal, and we had 2 new passports show up over a week ago. Surprising that a renewal is taking longer!
I have checked with a number of the expediting services, and no-one can help as the passport is in process, and we have a locator number for it.
So...has anyone heard of anything new or different we could / should be doing?
Pretty much the entire trip is booked using points/miles, so I can get all of those back, and book our trip for later in the summer, but we'd love to do EVERYTHING possible to still make this happen as scheduled.
Since the other passports are already mailed to you, the remaining one should be coming soon.
Plus you have your congressman's office's help. Inquiries from VIPs always help.
There has been a real cliff-hanging story about passport wait on the Italy forum. Everything worked out in the end, but the wait was pure agony. In Paris I waited one week only for my passport renewal, and already the unknown factor, the reading of backlogs, were agony. I imagine the longer waits are exponentially agonizing.
My advice: inquire with your congressman's office often. I contacted Ms Nancy Pelosi's office for help and was told that the backlog was longer than 10 weeks. I am sure her office's inquiries were helpful. The day after I got my passport, the Paris US embassy even called to ask if everything was ok because it had to get back to her office!
Our congressman's staff has been fantastic. I have read tons of stories of folks trying to call the passport office numbers, and never getting through. When I spoke to the congressman's aide, he told me that he would call them for me, and would call me right back. He called back within 5 minutes. They have a direct dial number that allows them to access the passport folks instantly, so they're an invaluable aid in getting answers and updates.
I'm to be back in touch with them next week, when we hit the official "2 weeks from departure" mark.
I paid for expedite service for 2 renewals on June 2. We just rcvd it in the mail on July 17, ~6.5 weeks wait.
Hopefully you've got good status already.
If not- 1. Get the passport locator from the website for the passport in question 2. Call the 877 #, hit 1, 3, then 0. At this point you'll hear a lot talk/gibberish, main thing you want to hear is "your wait time is x minutes". If you don't get to this point you'll usually get disconnected. 3. Use a phone you can put on speaker and mute. I had to call at least 10-12 times multiple days/nights before I got to connected with the "...your wait is x minutes" One time I called ~20 minutes before midnight Eastern and my wait time was 60 minutes, at midnight, the call got disconnected. 4. Once you are able to talk to someone, let them know your situation and ask where in the process the passport is in.
I ended up getting connected twice. 1st time I was told that the passport was almost done, should be done in 2 days, look for it in the mail on Fri/Sat. Once Sat arrived with no passport, I called again and was informed that the passports were done and should be mailed out. Both times, my wait times were >30 minutes.
I think you already have the inside track via your senator/congressman. The website for checking status in my opinion is inaccurate. When I checked on Monday the 15th, it said the passport was still in process. Today, the 18th it says that passports were mailed out and should be rcvd on the 15th
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