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Saga of Passport Renewal

Posted by (Freedonia) on

It finally arrived and for those of you who are waiting or planning to renew, here is my timeline:

I sent in my passport renewal via snail mail. They received it on January 18. My credit card was charged that day and it went into "In Process." I paid extra for expedited and it showed that fact when I logged in. I also signed up for email notifications of changes to status and it acknowledged that as well.

Two days ago, I checked and it was still "In Progress." Today, I got a notice from my PMB that a priority mail package arrived and its return address was the federal building in West Los Angeles. (I'm on the east coast.)

I logged in to my passport status and it now said "approved" and I should get my new passport by the end of the week. It was sent yesterday, 2/28 and arrived today. Exactly 6 weeks after it went into process.

And I never received any emails.

One other thing......for those of you with a Trusted Traveler account.....make sure you update your new passport information in your account or you could have problems when arriving in the country.

And....I was cheated out of a year. My old passport didn't expire until Januray 2024. My new passport expires in February of 2033.

Posted by
7754 posts

Glad it arrived, Frank II! I lost 6 months of use of my old passport, but it feels good to have the new one in my hand!

My old passport was returned separately about a week later. That is the passport I really wanted to save because I had a volunteer work trip to Cambodia, a work trip to Australia, and lots of European stamps, including I stopped into the Monaco office to have it stamped. ….and I was smiling with teeth in my passport photo- LOL!

Posted by
23600 posts

You were not cheated out of a year. You could have waited to renew your passport.

Posted by
412 posts

The title of this thread implies an unusually long or difficult process, but it sounds like you had a routine experience. Expedited processing time is five to seven weeks

Posted by
5314 posts

And....I was cheated out of a year. My old passport didn't expire until Januray 2024. My new passport expires in February of 2033.

Yes, sadly it's not like a subscription service where they extend our license for another 10 years. For me, this is the best time of year to renew - when I'm least likely to want to travel - so I didn't want to wait until closer to my expiration date to renew.

Posted by
16171 posts

CWSocial--that's the reason I renewed now. I didn't want to be caught later on with my wish to travel and not have at least six months left on my passport.

I'm going to put in for renewal of Global Entry about 11 months before it's due. In case I need to do a interview, I can always do it "upon arrival" rather than trying to get an appointment.

Posted by
115 posts

Glad you got it!!!

We're still waiting on my nieces' passports and we leave in four weeks. 😬 My SIL and nieces applied in January, expedited, and my SIL got hers and a letter came in about the girls' passports. My brother thought maybe there had been something wrong with the notarized form from their mother and was able to get a new appointment that day and they all went to the post office in person - turns out that the person at the post office that accepted the applications only signed my SIL's. It's still marked as "in process" and the new form was sent express mail that same day, so Friday will be 2 weeks since it was sent.

The wait is nerve wracking!!!

Posted by
5314 posts

Frank II, completely agree! Although, instead, I didn't book an early spring trip because I didn't want to be worrying about my passport coming back in time. Weird, because I would have booked fully refundable everything. But still, canceling a trip is too disappointing.

Posted by
1433 posts

Frank II, I applied for my Global Entry Renewal on 3 Dec 22 and it has been in, "Wait for Conditional Approval" status since about a week later. I travel to S. Korea in May and it expires this month. However, the site has this statement on my log in screen:

"Due to a significant increase in application volume, we are extending the grace period to allow you continued full benefits while U.S. Customs and Border Protection is finalizing your renewal application."

So, I will be testing this out on my return flight to SFO in June, if I do not have an updated card.

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