Some elected representatives even advertise that shortcut on their websites, offering to submit "urgent" inquiries on your behalf to the appropriate U.S. Your congressional representative can cut through the bureaucracy and go straight to the right person at the State Department. "I opted to fly to Dallas and was able to get my new passport on the same day," Williams said. Contact your elected representative He called the Houston Passport Agency, but it had no appointments available. Andrew Williams, a travel adviser at OvationNetwork, needed to renew his passport in Houston recently. Some travelers are planning a vacation at one of these destinations so they can get their passport while taking some time off. But there's availability at the passport agencies in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Honolulu, according to experts. And walk-up appointments are no longer available. Several readers have complained that they can't get appointments at the San Francisco Passport Agency, for example. But many passport agencies are fully booked, and for first-time applicants, the State Department says it can't guarantee an appointment will be available. You can get an expedited passport if you have travel booked within 14 calendar days by making an appointment to visit one of the 26 regional passport agencies. Remote, wild and devilishly subversive: Here's why Americans are coming back to TasmaniaĬourier or expeditor services usually don't have any better access to the passport system than the average person, according to Harding Bush, senior manager for security operations at Global Rescue, "But they do understand the process and will do the legwork of working with the regional or national passport agencies." Travel to a passport agency with availability And while these services also work, they prey on the most desperate travelers. Alwadish refers to them as "black market" courier services. The services have access to appointments set aside by the government to help serve disabled customers, those who are unable to leave work or those who have children, according to David Alwadish, CEO of ItsEasy.Com Passport & Visa Services.īut there's a second group of companies that pre-make appointments and then resell them to desperate travelers at a markup of between $800 and $1,000. They submit your paperwork on your behalf, and you can then pick up your passport in a few days. Use a passport expeditor serviceĬourier or expeditor services charge a fee of anywhere between $150 and $300 to handle your passport application. But my favorite strategy is one almost no one has mentioned in the voluminous coverage of America's passport crisis. I'll also tell you how Park got his wife's passport. Turns out there are a lot of ways to get around the passport logjam, from using a courier service to expediting your passport to contacting your elected representative. "We've also increased the number of lines and people available at the National Passport Information Center and will continue to increase capacity and hours to handle the influx of calls we are receiving."īut you can still get a passport for this summer. "Our staff is working thousands of hours of overtime," said Rachel Arndt, deputy assistant secretary for passport services. But travelers and passport experts say it can drag on for 15 to 18 weeks once you take mailing times into account. It takes 10 to 13 weeks to process a passport application, according to the State Department. The government also has paused its pilot online renewal system to fine-tune it, which some observers say has created a bigger passport backlog. The State Department is on track to break that record this fiscal year. In 2022, the government issued nearly 22 million passports. But the COVID-19 pandemic, plus an unprecedented demand for passports, has extended those waiting times. Usually, processing a passport application or renewal takes only a few weeks. But don't tell anyone! Why does it take so long to get a passport? Each issue is filled with breaking news, deep insights, and exclusive strategies for becoming a better traveler. So they joined thousands of Americans scrambling to get passports during a time of record delays.Ĭheck out Elliott Confidential, the newsletter the travel industry doesn't want you to read. With just two months before they were supposed to leave for Canada, the Parks didn't have enough time to renew the expired passport by mail. "But then I realized that my wife's passport had expired," said Park, a human resources manager from Washington. Richard's passport had another year on it. Richard and Stephanie Park waited too long to get their passports.Īfter booking airline tickets from Washington, D.C., to Montreal, they checked their travel documents.
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