Update to my story.
A while back, my son got his passport. More later.
His friend however did not so we were left basically paying for the friends trip (I know. Should have gotten travel insurance on people we don’t know) and scrambling for excursions and tours at the last second and many are sold out. We could change the name on the cruise but cannot on the booked flight so if we find a replacement they have to figure out how to get to Europe and back. Although the friend said he would pay the thousands we are out for him, we are not going to pursue it as
*The friend is broke-ass AND
*My son would feel it’s his obligation to pay us back and that’s not right
So yesterday (that’s what reminded me about this thread) I saw a youtube video with a guy that just got his passport but forgot to sign it. Tried to get into Canada and the border guard was a real asshole and not only refused entry based partly on not having a valid passport (it needs to be signed to be valid and the guard did not let him sign as he was already in Canada) when he crossed the border, the guard also threatened to have the youtuber arrested for illegal entry. I grab my son’s passport (we leave in less than a week) and sure enough it was unsigned. We took care of that real quick.
My gf got a new passport last year for our St Martin trip and she forgot to sign it. The TSA guy joked about the passport he was looking at being no good. She freaked, thinking she’d brought her old one. The TSA guy laughed, told her to relax, and gave her a pen so she could make a good,
Border control officers run on a spectrum. I was once almost denied entry back into the US (and I am a US citizen carrying a US passport) because of confusion of when to pull up from the waiting line to the border line at the crossing. I did not run the border, just moved to the booth after waiting for a few minutes after the car in front of us cleared and no signal of stop or go was given. Luckily he just berated me and made us wait for no reason for 5 minutes to prove his point. I consider myself lucky as he seemed the type that would have stripped my car and emptied our luggage onto the pavement and held us for 4 hours to conduct his “search”.
The key being she was still in the US and had not crossed any borders yet.
I just got my passport for my upcoming trip and the first thing I did (after doing my “happy dance” because it meant I didn’t have to cancel it at the last minute) was to look through it very carefully to see if there was anything I needed to do to make it valid. After signing it I had to search for a pencil, because it said to fill in the info on my address etc with a pencil.
I renewed my passport last year, and am planning on traveling to Europe in a month. I just checked, and yep, unsigned. So I search for good pen, practice my signature a couple of times on a scratch pad (I usually don’t sign my middle name), and then signed it. And of course the pen fucked up when I writing my last name. Guess I will find out who the asshole border agents are for the next ten years.
But anyway, thanks for posting this. Can’t imagine why I didn’t sign it right away, but now I am good.
Supposedly things have improved since the height of the pandemic, but my Global Entry / TSA Precheck renewal just took a LOT longer than the 4-6 months they were promising.
I too need to check if my passport is signed. The first time we had passports, we crossed into Canada with no problem, but on the way back, the US border guard pointed out that they needed to be signed. He wasn’t a jerk about it (may have helped that this was before passports were required for trips to Canada).
And we’ve run into a wide range of attitudes on border crossings. On one trip in 2019, we crossed into Canada and back 3 times. The first 2 were for just a few hours. The guard was confused, the first time (“You came all the way from Virginia to go to a funeral??”). The second guard, apparently weirded out by a car with 4 people from VA and one from MI, really gave us attitude when I said we’d been in the nearby town to shop and go to lunch. “There must be more to it than that! Where are you staying???”. And the third wasn’t a problem, really, but that border crossing had basically a garage; he rolled down the door behind us, the one in front of us was already down, and he opened our ice chest (but, the lid was at an angle where he could not see inside, so I’m not sure what the point was). It felt kinda weird.
The Canadian border guards were all quite pleasant.
I’m pretty sure it’s easier and quicker to renew a passport than to get a new one after the old one expired, so yes, start the renewal process soon. I think you’ll get the new one within a month or so, so unless you’re traveling soon, go ahead and submit the application.
That’s another annoyance. You have to send in the old passport as part of the renewal process. Which basically means you CANNOT TRAVEL for anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months, or however long it takes. Grrrr.
I submitted my online renewal (new process, may not be available to everyone) about 3 weeks ago and just received the notification that it was ready and being sent to me. I didn’t expedite any part of the process, so that was a quick turnaround.
You paranoid?! When Trump was elected in 2016, I purchased a radiation detector so that, if I survived a nuclear apocalypse, I could travel in low radiation zones.
I have a trip planned for April, right when it was going to expire. I started a new job last month so I wanted to have a valid passport for the onboarding process so I waited until then to send it in. It was a pretty smooth process all the way around, for renewing a valid passport pretty much all you need is a good digital photo.
I tried the online dealie, too. The State Dept website is simply amazing, A+. I submitted the application around Sept 25th and haven’t heard status since then but it seems like I might soon.
Did you sign up for email updates? They kept me updated even though it’s been so quick. My application was received on Oct 4 (not sure when I sent it in) and today I got a message saying I should get it by Oct 15. I don’t think it’s possible to do it more efficiently than that.
I just got a new passport online.
My old one expired this spring.
I filled in all the information, submitted a new photo, and sat back, planning on waiting 2 months to get it.
I received it in the mail 10 days later.
