How to Get a Passport

The Department of State and the US Post Office have teamed up to give the public a wonderful Passport Acquisition Process. My thesis of this blog post is to highlight the inefficiencies of the process, aswell as the incompetence of both agencies. First, you should know both are government agencies, of course. Next, understand the Post Office is running ridiculous deficits. And you already know the Dept of State is part of the US Government's 1.3 Trillion annual deficit. Why do I bring this up? Because both are run so poorly on so many levels it only makes sense they are severely mis-managed from a fiscal level as well.

My Story:

I am taking my son to Mexico in mid Feb 2013. I had a passport which was originally issued in 1999, so it is now expired. My five year old minor son has never had a passport. In addition, my wife and both kids will be traveling on a Disney cruise in April 2013. My wife's passport is not yet expired, but it  is registered under her maiden name. My second son has never had a passport.

My first step was to determine who needs passports. Do we need one to travel to Mexico via air? Yes. Does a minor need a passport if traveling via air to Mexico? Yes. Do you need a passport if cruising to the Bahamas and leaving from a domestic port? No. So wifey and second kid are all set - drivers license and original birth certificate get them on the boat. But my first boy and I need passports to fly to Mexico. Travel.state.gov is the official website where all of this above info can be found, but good luck trying to navigate that site. I gave up and called Disney cruise to get the cruise info and called the Dept of State 1-800 number to verify, and to determine we do need passports for the Mexico trip.

After that confusion was navigated, I had to determine how to get my passport updated and my minor son's first passport. I started at travel.state.gov, but quickly gave up and called them again to determine exactly what needed to be done, again. You may think I am anal, but we're dealing with government agencies and we have a strict time deadline we need to beat. And where does the post office come in to this story? Keep reading.

The agent ended up telling me info that could not be found on their website - I MUST renew my passport by mail. I was planning on doing his and mine together at the same time, but this cannot be done. WHY? It doesn't make much sense to me that a renewal must be done through the mail while a first time MINOR applicant MUST apply in person. Furthermore, both parents listed on the birth certificate must be present at the time of application, along with copies of both drivers licenses (front and back).You also need a photo sent with my app and a photo to bring to the post office for the minor.

So I ended up applying through the mail. I went to a local photo place listed in google maps as a passport place. I filled out the paperwork, and planned on fedexing it all to the dept of state to get the process moving. However, there was no overnight address on the paperwork. So I called the dept of state again, and the agent told me indeed there was no overnight address and I must send via USPS. WHY? And the post office drop box in my building picks up at 11am, the one down the street picks up at 3pm, and the box at the post office picks up at 5pm. I ended up dropping it at 5:30 after making a special trip to the post office, hoping the deadline was 5:30 or 6:00, so I wasted a day there. NOTE: the fedex box picks up at 7pm. The fee for mailing in a big envolope all the paperwork along with my old passport, check, etc, was about $2.00. My fedex agreement calls for a fee of $6.50 and picks up later and delivers probably ten times faster. At this point, my application is in, but after much frustration.

Next on to the minor. I already covered the fact that the state website does not give you all the details about both parents are required to be at the location at the time of the application delivery. Imagine if I ddin't call and wasted yet antoher trip taking him by myself? Earlier this week,  I did a little research on the usps.com webiste and figured out there is one post office in the city which takes passport applications on saturday, but it is by appointment only. So what would a normal person do? Call for an appointment. But because we are dealing with the gov't, nobody answers the phone. It rings and rings and rings, and then sometimes rings busy. I called on wed/th/fri, at least a dozen times, and never reached anyone. WTF? Today is saturday, and I figured we better just go down there and see what happens. I took the boy to CVS to try and get the photo taken. The first one we stopped at said their equipment was down. The next one we went to, there was an old lady scanning a garbage bag full of photos into the system, and the worker said she can take the pic, but can't print it out because she needs to use the same computer as the bag lady, and she can't kick off the bag lady. Seeing how many picks grandma was scanning in, and seeing how slow, we left. Google maps took us to another CVS which simply didn't exist. On to CVS #4 - it worked! We were in and out in 10 minutes or so.

The post office closes at 1pm, so now we're rushing home to pick up mom and head on to the post office which is open for passports on saturday. We arrived at 12:30 and waited in line.....Once we were next in line, the boy decides he needs to pee, and is holding himself. I ask the PO worker if they have a public restroom. You guessed it - NO. We leave line and run across the street to the library and use the bathroom. We run back to the PO, and get back in line. Now we're next again, and a new guy steps up in line, probably 7th in line. A PO worker asks the line if they are there for "some other service" and he responds "I just need an envelope, do I need to wait in this long line?" She responds - YES. The guy looks at me, I laugh, and he is not amused. Finally, we are called up. I ask about a passport app for my minor son, and she says I need an appointment and there are no more available today. heartbroken, but expected, I explain how I've been trying for an apt for days but nobody answers the phone there. She is not surprised to hear this, like it is a common complaint. She offers to schedule me for next week, and I take a spot for Monday. I felt like lecturing her about how this type of inept service is why the PO is losing 5 Billion a year at the cost of the taxpayers. I was actually surprised to learn it is 5B per quarter! How can that be? It is a monopoly!!!!!!

Now wifey and I need to both take off time from work on Monday, take my kid out of school, and make another run at it. If I knew this process would be so ridiculous, I may not have booked the mexico trip in the first place. Will I have any more unbelievable experiences with the PO in the future? YES, but I vow to use Fedex and UPS anytime I have the chance.

A couple more points: it takes 6 weeks to receive your passport after you submit your application. The fee is $110. I am convinced if I were in charge of this department, I could at least half the turnaround time and eliminate half of the workers in that department as well. There must be a plethora of inefficiencies to have that kind of time to wait with the levels of fees paid. Let's start here when evaluating our nation's deficit, Mr Obama.