I’ve had great experiences renewing mine by submitting it at the local county courthouse 2 blocks from my office. In and out in 5 minutes, and less restricted hours than the Post Office for submitting passport applications.
All the other info about not needing to use a private company to expedite your application is spot-on, though. I’ve helped clients get passports same-day at the Chicago regional passport office, but you have to be prepared to sit around all day and have proof of upcoming travel.
I also second, third, whatever the idea of getting help from your Senator or Rep’s office. And always having a valid passport if you have the remotest reason to anticipate international travel.
Nobody has mentioned that it sounds like somebody in the process is getting a kickback from the expeditor? The innocence of people not from Chicago astounds me sometimes.
One of the reasons why this took a couple of months to accomplish was because I went through the post office as a first step.
Florida is an unusual state, there’s a lot of folks wanting to travel out of country here, on cruises, flights, vacations, etc. As such, particularly in my area, the volume of calls got to be so massive that the post office couldn’t handle the passport ones alone.
When I went to my local post office, they directed me to a different facility. I called ten times a day for an entire week to set up an appointment. Not once was I able to reach an operator. Passport applications were by appointment only, but I drove down there anyway. Upon getting there, the postmaster told me that they used to have a line out the door every single day that stretched down the block, and that it was an untenable situation, so all the passport applications were redirected to the main courthouse in Orange county. That’s the mega facility that’s twenty stories tall, you see. Something more equipped to handle that level of influx.
In any case, that’s when my trouble started. The courthouse is the one that directed me to these third party people, after my attempts to obtain a passport through the post office failed, and only after arriving at the courthouse was I told that the application fee couldn’t be paid in cash or card, it could only be paid by money order, even though they accepted cash and card payments for other things. Then the third party people told me they needed flight information, and then things snowballed from there.
This entire process shouldn’t have taken more than 90 minutes of my time and a few forms of ID, but the system is so broken in my state that you can’t go through the post office, and the courthouse is pretty effed up as well, not very helpful in informing and their backlog can cause things to take several weeks longer than you might anticipate.
Anyhow, this thread and my situation is all moot. I was able to obtain a passport just in time. But my complaints about the process stand.
The state of florida and these third parties who get involved are liable to eff up your passport or delay you, and cost way more than they should. It’s a total rip-off and it’s definitely mismanaged.
I certainly needed to vent my frustration, and I appreciate the posters in this thread who brought certain facts to my attention. Now that the situation is resolved (and my situation appears to be unique, I’d wager even just outside orange county the situation isn’t this bad) this thread is probably moot.
But this pit wasn’t a failure. It fought both my ignorance on certain matters and was helpful to me, and definitely helped me vent my frustration.
Probably could have had a higher entertainment factor but not every thread can be an unforgettable experience.
Hopefully the explanation above lets you know why I went to the Courthouse, it wasn’t my first or even my second choice. I went to several different post offices and called a number of facilities that ultimately all directed me to the Courthouse, because they simply cannot handle it on a local level.
Going through the state department directly was an option unknown to me, boy had I known I could have skipped over the state government entirely, I probably would have fared better.
Special thanks in this thread go to Snowboarder, Lord Feldon, an (via privately) AnaMen. Their posts were the most useful in sorting out this disaster myself, or provided a workable alternative solution.
Insisting they were wrong about needing the state driver’s license to be issued more than a year ago in the first place, and hammering the fact that it still blew that requirement out of the water, seems to have resolved the matter very swiftly.
It also probably helped matters that I insisted that this matter be handled by the next person up in the chain, as someone who was handling this was definitely misinformed as to what the proper requirements are.
Also special shout out to Wilson
The post offices in Orange county are too swamped to handle it apparently, but this is usually the correct solution and would normally avoid the aggravation I went through.
All the post offices in my area directed me to the one on Turkey Lake Road, and that was the one with the nice postmaster who looked like he had PTSD and a distant look in his eye when he told me about the long lines they used to have going out the door, and how everything was handled at the courthouse now.
They had a specially dedicated (albeit tiny) room to do passports there, which obviously could only handle one applicant at a time, and it was empty and locked.
I understand why they’d redirect it to the courthouse if they had hundreds of people in a line.
A search on the usps.com website shows ten U.S. Post offices that offer passport services in that area. It’s not limited to “one office on Turkey Lake Road”.
PTSD Guy had long lines because all of the other post offices dumped people on the Turkey Lake Road because they were lazy and short-staffed. The person getting kickbacks at the courthouse “generously” offered to take his load from him to build up her own side business. Easy math if you start with the assumption that everybody in government is lazy and/or crooked. It ain’t necessarily so, but when a process is slower or more complex than it should be, especially if an outside party is involved, it’s how you place your bets.
Everyone I know, including myself, wife, kids, and friends, applied for their passports at a post office and had no problems even remotely close to this. It’s the very first place to start.
The only time I ever had to provide an itinerary was when applying for a visa to enter a specific country. We’re going to Brazil in November and had to send a flight itinerary and passports to the consulate to get our visas. I’ve had to do this with other countries I’ve visited, like India, China, and Russia. But I’m never real comfortable mailing my passport somewhere, I’ll tell you that right now!
It was never entirely easy for everybody. I don’t know about the rest of the country, but the passport office in Arizona was notorious in the late 60’s.
My Grandfather was complaining about the 6 months it took to get his passport renewed, and the motor mechanic he was complaining too told him that he’d had the same trouble with the same man (Arizona was a much smaller place in the late 60’s), and had kept the guys car in for repairs for 4 weeks in revenge.
Yes, same here. My daughter had her US passport within a couple of months of her birth (and traveled outside the US at three months old).
And it was easier than the process askthepizzaguy went through, even though both I and her mother had to be present, and even though her mother (my wife) is not a US citizen.
I have no idea what’s going on with askthepizzaguy. Is it possible that someone at the county clerk’s office is getting a kickback from some passport agency?
Yes, here’s the leading headline: “Local Florida yokel doesn’t understand that international relations are purview of federal government, proceeds to go to local strip mall empty office to get expedited bent over service by crooks. News at 11.”
Let me get this straight. Congress has enjoyed a decades long gridlock, and you are recommending that citizens go bitch and moan at them because of their inability to figure out how to file for and obtain a passport? smh. :smack::rolleyes: golf groan (it’s like a slow golf clap, except it’s a groan. And slow. Really sloooow). :dubious:
Unless I’ve read it totally wrong they DID go to the correct place. With in the past few years getting a new passport is a royal pain in the ass. You can’t just stop in a post office any more and have them look at the paper work, you have to get an appointment. In the DC area they are booked for 3-6 months. You can also go to the local court house, but they are booked too. They do interviews with you and a few other things as well.
Last year I wanted to get my daughter her passport, they didn’t ask me for flight information, but they do ask where you’re planning on going. With a kid under 16 both parents much be there, or they must get a notarized sheet saying why they aren’t there and include a copy of their IDs. We got to the courthouse at 9 and didn’t get out until noon. A friend of mine was going to get passports for her kids but decided against it when she couldn’t get an appointment for months.
I do believe that getting a passport renewed is far easier, as in just filling out the forms and getting a photo taken.
Moved to Norway. All over and done with. It took a lot of phone calls, but it’s very clear after all this is over, that the courthouse should never, ever, ever have recommended this place to me, because they didn’t get it done any faster, and it was ridiculously expensive.
Norway is great, by the way. The people are friendly, don’t give me shit about speaking English, and I just visited a doctor today for a pretty severe skin infection on my leg and it cost me 14 dollars. I saw the doctor after a 15 minute wait, and I got my pills the same hour for 30 bucks.
I asked my wife, well, is the doctor getting paid peanuts? Nope, apparently doctors are fabulously wealthy here as well.
Seems like Norway’s government is run by people who want government to work.
As opposed to the USA, where we elect people whose mission it is to prove government doesn’t work, so they make the worst possible system.
:dubious: