Saga of Passport Renewal

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!

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

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

This is encouraging. We're waiting for ours.

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.

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.

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!!!

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.

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.