And<\/em> you’re telling me not to bother contacting you until I am 2 weeks from traveling (which was backed up by info on their site).\u00a0 Great.<\/p>\nSo I spend the next two weeks growing increasingly nervous.\u00a0 At the 15-days-till-departure mark I call the NPIC.\u00a0 I’m told by a very friendly lady (surprising for a government agency) that yes, my application is being processed (in New Hampshire), but that there was a problem with my proof of identification and that a letter was mailed out the day before requesting more proof from me… 5 pieces specifically.\u00a0 I asked what was acceptable and was given a veritable laundry-list of things, all of which I could provide with the exception of a military ID.\u00a0 I expressed concern that by the time I received the letter and turned around and sent them the info they required, that there wouldn’t be enough time for them to finish processing my application before I had to depart.\u00a0 I asked if I could go to the Houston passport agency (1 of 14 in the country) and submit my proof of ID.\u00a0 She said yes, that Houston could take over the application and finish it there, but that in all likelihood that I would be starting a new application and I had better go prepared with new pictures and everything.\u00a0 I would have to make an appointment (via and automated phone line) because the agencies do not take walk-ins.<\/p>\n
Surprisingly I was able to make an appointment for Friday (8:30 the following morning \u2014 was expecting it to be the following week at the earliest).\u00a0 Woke up at stupid-o-clock in the morning and drove into Houston.\u00a0 I parked and made my way through the metal detectors right at 8am.\u00a0 After apparently stealthily tromping past the armed guards, into the elevator and up to the 4th floor, I found out that I had to wait downstairs, and to ask one of the alert fellows with guns specifically where.<\/p>\n
Was shown to a room that contained about 50 other folks who lucked into the same appointment time (silly me, thinking that time was mine alone).\u00a0 Scanning the room, I decided to sit in that one seat left in the first row.\u00a0 After a half an hour of people slowly trickling in, and me wondering if I was going to actually see a human being any time before the afternoon, a guard poked his head in and told us that he was going to start leading folks up an elevator-full at a time, and would the first row kindly follow him.\u00a0 Ha!\u00a0 I just moved up from 50th in line to 8th (sometimes it pays off to sit in the front of the class)!\u00a0 Upon entering the elevator, I slipped immediately to the side near the door and let the remainder of the people fill in the back of the car.\u00a0 That little tactic pushed me to 3rd in line when we exited.<\/p>\n
When it was my turn I stepped up and told my tale.\u00a0 As I was talking, I could see the lady becoming more confused.\u00a0 When I told her that the folks on the phone said they could just take over my application, she excused herself to go talk to someone about that.\u00a0 Fantastic.\u00a0 That was going to be my death knell, asking a government agency to do something outside of their normal parameters.\u00a0 We’ve all been to the DMV, and know that even smiling at them is taken as some sort of an act of aggression, but asking them for something special was grounds to be attacked.\u00a0 This was the Fed, and sure as shit they were going to send me packing.\u00a0 She returned, handed me a printed “now serving” style number and was told that they could help me.\u00a0 Really?!\u00a0 Color me impressed.<\/p>\n
My number was B166.\u00a0 The digital board showed that they were serving A001.\u00a0 Um, was I now behind 1165 other people, or was this a special numbering sequence for troublemakers like me?\u00a0 About 45 minutes later I was called to a special window, the wonderfully nice lady there listened to me patiently, and laid out what she was going to do.\u00a0 No, they weren’t going to take over or start a new application for me… I was already in the system with New Hampshire, and it would be faster just to resolve the issues at hand.\u00a0 She took all of the 20 or so forms of ID I brought with me, photocopied them all, put her little rubber-stamp on them and signed it.\u00a0 She said she was going to overnight that paperwork to them, to arrive on Tuesday since Monday was Labor Day.\u00a0 It would be coming from their agency, so would be all official and such.\u00a0 I filled out a FedEx overnight shipping tag that she could send along with it so they could expedite the passport to me on my own dime.\u00a0 I asked if she had done everything from her side that could be done, and if I had done the same from my side.\u00a0 Yes we respectively did, and there was nothing more to do but wait and check back every few days or so.<\/p>\n
I left feeling positive.\u00a0 I was in a good mood.\u00a0 I even got to work in time to only lose half a day.\u00a0 Checking my mail that evening, I notice that the letter from New Hampshire had arrived!\u00a0 Ha!\u00a0 I beat it to the punch… but upon reading it my heart sank.\u00a0 Not only did they want a boatload of ID, but there was a 5 page “supplemental worksheet” they wanted me to fill out and return with the ID.\u00a0 Crap.\u00a0 The absence of the worksheet was a sure-fire way for them to delay my passport even further.\u00a0 I scrambled to provide all the info they wanted: a complete work history, a complete education history, a complete list of every place I ever lived and a complete list of my immediate family with birthdates and the cities they were born in.\u00a0 They even wanted my baptismal information.\u00a0 Damn, I didn’t remember half of this crap.<\/p>\n
Many calls and a stress filled evening later I had it all completed.\u00a0 The next morning I schlepped myself down to FedEx and overnighted the worksheet, a duplicate copy of all the ID I provided in Houston, another FedEx overnight return tag, and a polite letter explaining everything again and begging them to please hurry the fuck up.\u00a0 With any luck, they should get both FedEx packets at the same time.\u00a0 I called the NPIC hotline and told them what I had done as well, and gave them the tracking number for the packet I just sent.\u00a0 I was now just shy of 2 weeks from departure, with no passport \u2014 18 weeks after I started this whole mess.<\/p>\n
A few calls the following week let me know that they started re-processing the application on Wednesday, and the folks at the NPIC hotline fired off an “urgent” email to New Hampshire agency reminding them that my departure date was a little over a week away.\u00a0 Come Monday, five days before I departed I called again to check the status.\u00a0 The lady on the phone was phrasing things in a manner that hinted that she could see what the current status of my app was, and when pressed, she said she could not provide me with that info.\u00a0 I asked her for an off-the-record forecast of my chances of getting my passport before I was supposed to leave on Friday \u2014 “not so good” was her reply.\u00a0 Wonderful.\u00a0 She suggested I go to the Houston agency and have them start the process over again.\u00a0 I told her that not only did I take time off work to attempt that, but that they shot that plan down in favor of what they did.\u00a0 I thanked her and hung up.<\/p>\n
I called the airline and asked what my options were.\u00a0 I had until 24 hours before my departure to reschedule my flight (at the low, low cost of an additional $200) or lose the tickets altogether.\u00a0 That didn’t leave me much time to just sit and wait to see if the passport showed up.<\/p>\n
Despondent, I talked to my girl and we came up with another date.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it had to be in November as she was going to be gone all of October.\u00a0 It would have been near five months since I saw her last at that point.\u00a0 This was going to suck.<\/p>\n
Eating lunch later that day I decided to do a little homework on the web.\u00a0 I’d read lots of news reports in the last few months about how people were getting all pissed off about the exorbitant delays with passports, so I figured that people were mouthing off about how they got a few days from leaving and still didn’t have theirs, and maybe there were some clever solutions they came up with.<\/p>\n
Bingo.\u00a0 I hit pay dirt.<\/p>\n
Consistently, folks were having success with two avenues when it came down to the wire: The U.S. Consular Task Force Watchdog Group and their local Congressman (and they provided the contact info I needed for the watchdog group).\u00a0 The DoS\u2019s Bureau of Consular Affairs is the agency that oversees all things passport.\u00a0 The watchdog group are the folks who respond to abuses and neglect within the passport system.\u00a0 I called them first and, again, told my story of woe.\u00a0 The nice gentleman on the phone seemed gruff, but sympathetic, he took my information and vowed to see that something was done about it, and I might get a call the next day.\u00a0 I then phoned the Congressman’s office, and was quite surprised to learn that they have staffers for this and other issues (like tax stuff) that would act on my behalf and light a fire under the Fed.\u00a0 I needed only fill out a release of information form (to give them legal right to be my agent in this, and to provide all the details about my case) and fax it to them.\u00a0 I did.<\/p>\n
Literally an hour later I receive a phone call from the NPIC, with a chipper and very very<\/em> polite woman on the other end.\u00a0 She called to inform me that my application was complete, and that they would be shipping my passport out the next day via FedEx overnight, and I should receive it no later than Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n*blink*
\n*blink*<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of the two contacts I just<\/em> made got a hold of the NPIC and jammed a size 13 boot clear up their ass so far they could taste shoe leather.\u00a0 Jeebus!\u00a0 If I’d have known that, I’d have called them a week ago and saved myself a lot of stress.<\/p>\nAs it turns out, they got my passport to FedEx that<\/em> day, and I had it in my hot little hands on Tuesday.<\/p>\nThe first moral of my story is this: If you don’t have a passport, go and apply for it now.\u00a0 NOW!!<\/span><\/strong> It costs about $112 (including the photo from the post office).\u00a0 They are good for ten years, and you might just decide that you want to take a trip out of the country.\u00a0 You need them now even to go to-and-fro from Mexico and Canada \u2014 and that is the exact reason for all the slow-downs… literally 10x the normal number of applications have been filed this year.\u00a0 Also, they are the<\/span> best form of ID, even more so than your driver’s license (a passport is a Fed issued ID, your license is a state issued ID, and the passport is much harder to get and more accepted).\u00a0 If you had a passport and it’s expired, or about to, renew it now.\u00a0 NOW!!<\/span><\/strong> See above.<\/p>\nThe second moral of this story is: No matter how polite the NPIC people are \u2014 and trust me, every single person I talked to was friendly, intelligent sounding, compassionate, and oozed an aura of urgent helpfulness \u2014 they are lying to you through their teeth.\u00a0 They are anesthetizing your sense of outrage at being bent over and sodomized dry by the system.\u00a0 They are not your pals, so work the system to your advantage.\u00a0 Make the calls and climb over their heads as much and as frequently as you can.\u00a0 Here are the contacts you might eventually need:<\/p>\n
National Passport Information Center: (877) 487-2778
\nU.S. Consular Task Force Watchdog Group: (202) 647-7948<\/p>\n
Just check the web for whoever your local Congressman is, and call his office and talk to the helpful people there.\u00a0 This is the one time I can happily say “this is your tax dollars at work”.\u00a0 I suspect that they made the call that lit the fire and got me my passport, but hell, call everyone<\/em> and let them race to see who helps you first.<\/p>\nThis is the end of my long-winded story.<\/p>\n
**MESSAGE ENDS**<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My girly-girl made it safe and sound to South Africa, and by all accounts is having a wonderful time.\u00a0 I imagine it’s a bit of sensory overload, but hopefully she’ll be able to absorb enough to have memories she can relish for a good long time. So, during my recent trip to Wales I kept […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aggravation","category-stress"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":562,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions\/562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}