mobile passport control app

That happened to us at Newark. We had prepped and did everything before our trip, and input information required when we landed, but it kept telling it couldn't process. Had to do the painful longgg passport lines, too. There were airport workers walking down the long line telling people to download app and etc... When we showed them what our app said --can't process- they shrugged. We weren't the only ones in line with problems with the Mobile Passport Control App.

I landed in Chicago on 11/8 and the same thing happened to me. On the 3rd time I finally got the QR code.

However - there were zero agents working that could process the mobile passport ushers, of which there were me and one other. A supervisor stepped up and finally processed us through.

Yes that happened to us in DFW coming back from Japan.

We just came in thru DFW On November 11 and it worked fine for us. We were told to bypass the immigration hall and go straight to retrieve our bags. We had the same experience entering the US through Seattle in October. I sure hope these are temporary problems because it has been an incredible time saver for us.

Maybe it's a result of too many people trying to log onto the airport wifi at the same time. Mobile Passport didn't work for me in July 2016, but worked fine in October 2017 (San Francisco).

Response from the app:
Hi there,

Thank you for your message. I'm sorry to hear about your attempt to use the Mobile Passport app. Please confirm that your:

1. Date of birth and passport expiration date are correct;
2. Name appears exactly as it does on your passport. (For instance, under your Surname, enter: last name. Under Given Names, enter: first name SPACE middle name SPACE middle name, and so on. All hyphens and apostrophes should be replaced by a SPACE.);
3. Passport has not expired or will expire in the next six months; and
4. Passport number has been entered correctly.

Also, the device must be set to "today" in the device's Date & Time settings versus the time zone used while traveling.

If you did this and confirmed that all of your information on the app was identical to your passport and still received an "unable to process" message, then the inability to process your submission was most likely due to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Unfortunately, for various reasons, CBP is not able to process 100% of submissions made through the Mobile Passport app. Your personal data is encrypted and transmitted securely via the Mobile Passport app to CBP for review, just as if you were using an Automated Passport Control kiosk. We cannot access your personal data nor do we have any insight into how your data is analyzed by CBP.

I know it's frustrating, especially when you put in the time and effort to simplify the administrative duties associated with your arrival. Please try it next time and let us know how it goes.

Safe travels,
Jean
NOTE from Lee - resetting date and time is something to look at. My iphone was set to automatic reset date/time but when I just undid that (turned auto off), the time zone changed from the previous Denver (correct) to the new Chicago - NO, I do not live in that central time zone and did not land there either. I then manually set it to Denver. There are known "inexplicable" glitches in date/time in ios software so may be necessary to undo automatic time/date and manually reset it upon landing in the U.S.? Worth a try. Turning my phone off and back on did not boot my time date. Maybe it is time for global entry?

And location services would have to be ON.

Thanks for posting the info you received. I bet the error I received the first two times I tried to submit my info upon landing was because my phone hadn’t switched to the new time zone. Once my phone realized I was in Chicago and the time corrected I received the QR code.

Wow! Wish I had read this before we came through SFO today, because that may have been why we got the "cannot process" message. And of course, it was the one time when one of us was feeling poorly and really didn't need an extra half hour standing in line. It had worked fine all the other times. Something to keep in mind for the next trip!
Edit: Wish the CBP staff people knew to suggest this !!