According to this web post, there's a new online way to renew your passport that may or may not work, and that you may or may not want to use. I suppose the best news in the article is the State Department says don't worry we're up to speed and everything is back to normal, you can believe that or not as you choose.
https://thriftytraveler.com/news/travel/online-passport-renewal-public-rollout/
Thanks Phred. I bookmarked the websites for future use. Since my passport doesn't expire for two years, they have time to work out the bugs.
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/for-anyone-sweating-passport-renewals
A month seems to be 'normal' now.
If this succseeds than it'll be another win for the convenience of the people
My recent renewal went quite quickly, but I did it before the season started. The one unusual aspect was I got no emails during the process until the very end when there was a flurry of three or four or five all right next to each other.
I submitted my passport renewal application online Aug 3, 2024
They took my money (charged my card) Aug 4 and said the application was accepted and I would get further email notification when my renewal was "in process" and then when it was completed,.
The last thing I heard was Aug 4.
The website said expect 6-8 weeks.
The new passport was in my mailbox Aug 12... so 9 days from submitting to receiving. That's not too bad.
Thank you to ribaholic60 above (and phred for this thread) for motivating me to renew my passport online- exact same experience as ribaholic60. 9 days from submitting application online, uploading photo which was easy even though I was concerned this best passport photo ever, may not be accepted due to light shading on one side of white area.
Applied online Sept. 12 received today Sept. 20.
Sure saves time and money and no need to mail current passport back. Glad I applied week before news reported online fully available.
It’s great that the new, Online method is working for folks. Three weeks ago, my husband mailed in his application with a photo stapled to it (staple all 4 corners of the photo!), and the new passport arrived in the mail this week. It’s got three photos now, one in color, one B&W, and one very small. Visa pages no longer have lines to section off spaces for immigration staff to aim their stamps.
The old way still works, for now. I’ve still got a while before I need to renew mine.
There must be some good reason but I can't imagine why the "main" photo is in B&W and there's one in color on the page across from it.
Also really don't like the hard plastic page.
Because the photograph was laser engraved into the polycarbonate data page, it's inherently black & white.
Between the color photo being cut up with lots of little white lines in a wavy pattern (which makes it look like there’s a big, white thumbprint on it, making the image somewhat hard to make out), plus the third, tiny photo being in B&W like the bigger photo on the main page, and the silver hologram edge placed in one corner of that bigger B&W photo, the new design is clumsy. Maybe that discourages modifying the photos, or makes accurate counterfeit passports harder to replicate, but it all seems unnecessarily complicated on the surface. The hologram partial border on the big B&W image says, in All Caps, in tiny print, “We the people United States of America we the people United States of America,” and the small B&W photo has a numerical birthdate (in MM DD YR format) printed over the bottom portion. Awkward. Also, Passport # is in raised plastic characters, as are the birthdate and date of expiration, but all else is flush with the surface of the page.
Gone is the cool bald eagle head on the signature page, replaced now by the color headshot photo of the person named on the passport. Maybe the hard plastic page could serve as a little picnic tray on a cramped train or bus space.
Good point, nice little picnic tray.
The travel writer Peter Greenberg predicts that now that you can DIY renewals online, many people will be disappointed after weeks of waiting to get a rejection notice because their DIY photo doesn't meet the requirements.
I used that Online Renewal back in late 2022 when it was being Piloted. Worked Fine.
But Last week I had to renew my wife's passport for next years trip. I submitted it on Sep 16th. And the new passport arrived at our home the following Monday the 23rd, came via Priority Mail, 1 week to the day. That was Shocking, really Amazing! (during the pilot it took me 2 months to get the new one) It took me longer to get a photo that the site would accept. The local Passport Photo folks didn't want to send me the photo in email to submit it. And scanning the one they gave us was pretty crappy as our scanner isn't very high resolution.
We ended up taking our own photo (after LOTs of pictures they wouldn't accept because of shadows or something else in the background.) Finally even tried sheets for the back ground but the wrinkles created shadows and other places in the house didn't work well either for one reason or another. Finally got one to work from a room with no direct sunlight and a while wall. You cannot believe how many pictures I uploaded before I got one to work.
-Bill
I used the DIY last week for a family member. Photo from Walgreens - I knew the background was fine, we've used the same Walgreens several times in the past. $18.
I initially had trouble getting the photo to be accepted online. The message I received was something to the effect that the background was not acceptable. It did look lighter than the examples shown online, but I knew there was no change in the background from my mail renewal less than a year ago.
Turns out that the problem I was having was that I failed to increase the size of the photo large enough to fully fit the "box" on the online application. You use an online tool to maneuver your photo to the center and expand to the sides of the box. To my eye, it was fine, but apparently I was a little bit short of the border lines of the box. This left a very tiny interior line which the application read as an inadequate background. When I expanded the photo to what I thought was beyond the border lines, the photo was accepted.
Lesson - keep playing with the photo placement on the application. The error message may not really explain the problem.
RE:
The travel writer Peter Greenberg predicts that now that you can DIY renewals online, many people will be disappointed after weeks of waiting to get a rejection notice because their DIY photo doesn't meet the requirements.
I was concerned about this and found out immediately the photo was rejected. The web page program accepts or rejects before accepting the application.
When my initial submission was rejected, the system redirected me to a page with examples of acceptable and not acceptable photos.
Just got my renewal in six (6) days today. Photo was approved at submission. No need to return old passpport
The online renewal passport arrived in 9 business days!!
Quite pleased, even though not the 6 days noted above, it beats the mail-in 3- 4 weeks after paying "rush" fees that I did late last year!
