National Passport Center 1-877-487-2778

Passport status requests 1-606-526-7600

Washington passport desk at 202-647-7948.

US Consular Task Force (WATCH DOG) 202-647-7948

US Department of State phone directory unclassified
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/82073.pdf

The following is a list of the abbreviations you will see next to the employees name in the directory. Assuming you know where it’s being processed look for the following. Once you have found someone make sure you have your passport locater number, name, DOB, SS# ready.

CA/PPT…………………………………………………….Office of Passport Services CA/PPT/BN…………………………………………………..Boston Passport Agency CA/PPT/CG………………………….……………………..Chicago Passport Agency CA/PPT/HH……………………..…………………………Honolulu Passport Agency CA/PPT/HN……………………………….………………..Houston Passport Agency
CA/PPT/LA………………………………………….…Los Angeles Passport Agency CA/PPT/MM…………………………………………….……..Miami Passport Agency CA/PPT/No…………………………………………….New Orleans Passport Agency
CA/PPT/NPC……..……………………National Passport Center, Portsmouth, NH CA/PPT/NY……….……………………….………………New York Passport Agency CA/PPT/PA…………………….………………………Philadelphia Passport Agency CA/PPT/SE……….………………….……………………….Seattle Passport Agency
CA/PPT/SF……………………..……………………San Francisco Passport Agency CA/PPT/SIA…………………………………………….……Special Issuance Agency CA/PPT/SM……………………….……………………….Stamford Passport Agency CA/PPT/WN…………………………………………….Washington Passport Agency

Email your congressman at http://www.house.gov/

Email your Senator http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

I haven’t verified any of this information, but I’m posting it as I got it for the benefit of those who are desperate for passports, but may not read all the string of comments, which grows daily.

An industrious reader writes:

An update to my earlier post and a few tips from the lessons I learned. I applied Mar. 17. Got my son’s passport on Tuesday and mine is out priority mail for delivery on Monday (we leave on Wed. Jun 20).

First, forget about the “877″ number. Call 606-526-7600. It’s a direct line to the passport agency. You’ll immediately be placed on hold, but you’ll get through pretty quickly. If you don’t want to incur the long distance charges, dial the “877″ number, don’t hang up when you get the “call volume” message. Press 9-3-1 and you’ll get right back in the loop. Next, call the passport task force in DC at 202-647-7948. They’re very helpful and will get involved to expedite if you’re traveling within 72 hours. My passport was in New Hampshire and I called them directly at 603-334-0523. Someone answered, took my info, then I got a call back within 2 hours saying my passport was expedited and would be sent out priority mail the next day. I also kept calling my congressman. And start calling everyone early!!! Don’t wait until the 14 days before that the passport agency suggests. Get on it and stay on it.

Good luck to those who are waiting!!

Good luck indeed!

Just imagine if we had government-controlled health care system. One might have to go through all this just to get a bunion fixed before a walking tour. Or any number of other ‘elective’ procedures that folks in this country can waltz in and get any day without hassle. And that people from other countries with nationalized health care fly here so that they can get them too.

A point I noticed is that travelers to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda need to make sure to take their receipts showing that they had applied for passports. So, don’t head for one of these places with birth certificates, picture IDs, and forget to take your passport receipt.

Frustrated travelers who paid an extra $60 to get their U.S. passports expedited and still had to wait for them can now get a refund from the government.

The decision to refund the money, disclosed in a State Department document sent to members of Congress, represents the latest effort to come to grips with a massive backlog in passport applications that has ruined or delayed summer vacation plans for thousands in the U.S.

The delays were largely due to a new rule that requires U.S. citizens to have passports when flying to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda. Last week, the government announced it was suspending that rule until September, as long as travelers to those countries carried a receipt showing they had applied for a passport.

The passport delays were so bad that many of those who paid for faster service, at a cost of $60 plus the regular processing fees of $97 for a new passport, didn’t receive their passports within the expected 14 days. Some who paid extra waited a month or more.

Passport applicants who paid for expedited service but did not get it should send written refund applications to the State Department’s refund office in Washington. They should provide their passport numbers, if available, their names, dates and places of birth, the approximate dates they applied for the passports, as well as mailing addresses and phone numbers.

I guess all those who have lost thousands of dollars of non-refundable airline fares and hotel bookings can take solace in the fact that they will at least get their $60 back. But when? And at the cost of going through how much red tape? I’m going to send this post to my DIL (you would think she would waiting with baited breathe for each new post of mine, but, alas, as we who have children all understand, we’re never prophets in our own countries), and I’m sure she’ll hop on it and try to get her money back. I’ll keep everyone posted as to what happens.

At the Los Angeles passport office, more than 150 people began lining up at 4 a.m. Tuesday, hoping to pick up their passports that had been promised them weeks before. The office, which is in the Federal Building in Westwood, provides last-minute passports for travelers living in the southern section of California and portions of Nevada.

Many of them had a flight within a day or two and couldn’t get through to anyone at the State Department either by phone or e-mail even though many had applied at least 12 weeks ago. Some who did get through were told that their passport had been express mailed to them a week earlier, only to be told later that it actually hadn’t left the building and was unlikely to get to them in time.

What a great government we have. First you can’t get through to them, then when you do finally get through, they give you faulty information.

Here’s the part of the article that really caught my eye:

The State Department estimates that it will process more than 17 million passports this year, a 40% increase from 2006, as new rules requiring passports for flights to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda are contributing to the record number of applications.

The agency said it has added 200 employees, recalled retirees with past passport experience and opened a new processing center in Arkansas.

Okay, let’s figure this out. The State Department estimates an additional 17 million passports and so hires an additional 200 people. If you divide the number of new hires (200) into the number of estimated additional passports requiring processing, you find that these 200 people would each have to process 85,000 passports to deal with the additional demand for which they’ve been hired. If these people worked 16 hours per day 365 days per year they each would have to process about 15 passports per hour to get the 17 million dealt with within a year. But they ain’t gonna work 20 16 hours per day, nor are they going to work 365 days per year. How in God’s name did the idiots at the State Department think that hiring a mere 200 people to deal with the extra number of passports they themselves estimated would accomplish anything?

This is what I mean about government incompetence.

Remember the Jet Blue fiasco several months ago. There were some canceled flights and scheduling snafus and a few planes that stayed out on the tarmac for a few extra hours. At most, the whole debacle inconvenienced a few thousand people. The CEO issued a public apology and had it printed in full page ads in the New York Times and other newspapers. He assured passengers that it wouldn’t happen again and sent free vouchers to those who got caught up in the mess. What did the government do during all this. A few members of congress got in a little grandstanding time by talking about how the government should regulate the airlines more heavily to insure that incidents such as this one don’t occur in the future. The government is always good about pointing the finger at others who under perform, and the recommended solution is always more government regulation.

What is the State Department going to do about this totally outrageous situation? Where are all the politicians threatening to sanction the State Department? This meltdown has cost more people more money and more grief than a thousand Jet Blue incidents, yet who is going to step up and make it right? Who is going to pay for all the non-refundable flights that people will lose out on? Who is going to take any responsibility whatsoever.

Aside from hiring the totally inadequate extra 200 people, what else are the dolts who are responsible for this situation doing about it?

All of its 18 passport offices are working overtime, and it even has had senior officials handle telephone calls after the end of their workday.

Well, la tee da! The State Department has even had it’s senior officials handle telephone calls after the end of their workday. I guess that’s why no one can get through. Do these morons think that this will even begin to make a dent in the extra 17 million passports that they knew were coming?

This is government incompetence at its very worst. And these are the same folks who want to bring you nationalized health care. And the movement is gathering momentum among the non-thinkers out there (i.e., the majority of the population). We should be very worried.

I had our daughter-in-law’s passport with me in the car so in case she was hassled my son – who had a valid passport – could come get hers and take it back so that she could get through.

After about 45 minutes of my waiting curbside, they showed up. Here’s what happened in passport control:

They came through and my son showed his passport then my DIL showed her certified birth certificate, driver’s license, marriage license and the copy of the passport we faxed her.

The following conversation took place:

Passport control jerk: Why don’t you have a passport?

DIL: I applied for a renewal 6 weeks ago and it hadn’t come by the time we left.

PCJ: How did you get this copy then?

DIL: They faxed it to me.

PCJ: Who is ‘they?’

DIL: My inlaws, who are at our house staying with the kids. My passport came while we were gone. They were going to FedEx it to me, but FedEx said they couldn’t guarantee that it would get to me before I left, so they faxed me a copy.

PCJ: What name are you traveling under?

DIL: My own name: Eades.

PCJ: I see his name (nodding toward my son) on the list, but not yours.

My son tries to hand him the boarding pass with the DIL’s name on it. PCJ doesn’t bother to look at it.

PCJ: What is your date of birth.

The DIL tells him.

PCJ looks over her birth certificate acting like he can’t find it.

DIL: (pointing) It’s right there.

PCJ: Go on through.

Despite the snotty, condescending it’s-my-job-to-protect-our-border attitude, the PCJ never looked at her driver’s license or the faxed copy of her passport, which were the only picture IDs she had. He looked at her birth certificate for her date of birth and that was the sum total of all the document checking he did.

In a perfect world inhabited by true civil ’servants’ (there’s a real oxymoron for you), the PCJ (who wouldn’t have been a jerk) would have said something along the lines of:

We’ve really been overwhelmed with people applying for passports. Don’t feel bad. Your not the first to come through like this. I’m really sorry for all the hassle you’ve had. Come on through and welcome home.

Ah, well, it’s nice to dream.

The DIL wasn’t hassled either coming or going by the Mexican passport people. And she didn’t have to bribe anyone either.

Except for the angst caused by the passport’s not arriving on time, the trip went well.

MD called FedEx to see if we could get it to her on Saturday so she would have it for the trip home today (Sunday). FedEx told MD that they could only guarantee delivery by next Wednesday (so much for their promise of overnight anywhere), so the DIL elected not to take the chance. She figured that if the passport got delivered after they had left, there would be a huge possibility that it would never find its way back to her in Dallas.

We faxed a copy of the new passport to her in Puerto Vallarta. They come home this afternoon, so we’ll see what happens when she tries to get through Mexican passport control and U.S. passport control and customs with a copy (and her driver’s license, certified copy of her birth certificate, etc.). I’ll head to the airport to pick them up at about 6:30 today with her passport in hand in case they call and I have to bring it in. I’ll post as to what happens after they’re home or sent back to Mexico or jailed or whatever the case may be so that others can plan accordingly.

It took a little over seven weeks for her to get her passport, for which she had paid for expedited service that allegedly would get it to her in two weeks. After four weeks she contacted Kay Baily Hutchison’s (one of the U.S. Senators from Texas) office for help. I don’t know if the seven plus weeks that it took to get the passport is standard now or if there was intervention on the part of KBH to help expedite the process. Some commenters have reported 11 plus week waits.

As to the comments, I’m behind in getting them out of the moderation queue because I’ve been gone for a couple of days. I flew to Austin on Friday to meet by buddy Jim Hickman (a frequent commenter to this blog) for 18 holes of golf on Friday and 36 on Saturday. We played Colovista, which is a nicely laid out course, but has greens made of Bermuda grass, which were like putting on velcro (for me, at least, since I’m not used to them). By the time I got back last night the sun, the heat, and the humidity had taken their toll, so about all I could muster up the gumption to do was to scroll through the 376 spams that had stacked up, rescue the two comments trapped there, move them to the moderation queue, and hit the sack. As soon as I publish this post, I’ll deal with the comments in moderation.

I’m happy to report that all flights went smoothly. I flew Southwest Airlines both ways, and it went without a hitch. Southwest, which I’ve flown often, is a superb airline in terms of customer service and on-time arrival. SW employees are uniformly polite and professional and helpful, unlike the trolls at U.S. Air, nιe America West Airline (aka America’s Worst Airline). The only grip I have with Southwest is their cattle-call like boarding. I much prefer assigned seats.

The Austin airport is grand. It’s beautiful and even the TSA agents (at least the ones with whom I interacted) are nice. It’s great to be back in the South where, in general, people are much friendlier and more polite. Since the TSA agents are recruited from the local populace, it would make sense that they, too, would be more polite. They were helpful and even joked with me because in the process of shedding myself of my cellphone, pocket change, and other metal objects, I forgot my money clip. The TSA jerks at the Santa Barbara airport, which is a dinky little airport, are way too full of themselves. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of them smile. And what’s worse is that they are ever vigilant for all sorts of things that make it through every other TSA screener in America. I don’t think I’ve ever had a guest who has come to Santa Barbara make it out without having to forfeit some small object that has made it through all the other airports they went through to get to SB.

I guess there have to be flaws even in paradise.

Our son and daughter-in-law planned a 10th anniversary trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico several months ago. The DIL, who is incredibly anal about never waiting until the last minute for anything (one wonders why she married into this family), went to the post office to renew her passport six weeks ago. The lady who waited on her asked when her trip was, the DIL said six weeks, the lady said it should take no more than four weeks, the DIL (her anality kicking in) said I want to pay the extra $75 to expedite and get it here in two weeks, and I want to pay the extra $15 to have it overnighted. The lady told her that all that was unnecessary, but it was her money.

After four weeks had passed with no passport, the DIL tried to call the number given to her as a number to use to check the status. She would call, get an automated message telling her that all agents were busy and to stay on the line and her call would be answered in the order in which it was received. She would stay on the line for 10-15 minutes then get a message that said there were an unusually large number of calls right then, please call back later, goodbye, and would then disconnect. She went through this process a couple of dozen times over two days, then hied herself back to the passport place at the post office.

After spending almost an hour in a long line (while managing two toddlers), the agent told her that there was nothing that could be done there but that she should call Kay Baily Hutchison’s (KBH) office. KBH is one of the U.S. Senators from Texas. The DIL called KBH and talked to the staff. They took her number and said many people were having the same problem and that they would get to work on it. After a week, with her trip looming a few days away, the DIL called KBH again. The staff told her they were aware of her problem and working on it, but that all their efforts were going into the problems of people leaving the next day, not the next week. Don’t call back, they said, we’re working on it.

As the day of the trip (May 30th) drew near, the DIL happened to hear of someone else heading to Mexico who had encountered a similar problem. She called this person only to find her gone, but her mother told the DIL that her daughter had gone to the airport early with a certified copy of her birth certificate and her driver’s license and had been given a temporary travel visa to Mexico. The DIL called American Airlines (the airline on which they had their tickets) and asked about a temporary travel visa. The person at AA told her that they had never heard of such a thing.

The DIL waited for Tuesday, the day before leaving, and received no passport. What she did get was MD and me showing up to babysit the kids in finest grandparent fashion while she and son were gone.

Early Wednesday morning, I took them to the airport a couple of hours early so they could see what they could figure out. They talked to the agent at AA who told them she would let them board the plane with the certified birth certificate and driver’s license, but couldn’t guarantee that the customs agents in Mexico would accept it. She told them that if they had trouble getting in to Mexico that they should slip the agent a $50 and said agent would probably let them through. She told them the big problem would be getting back, and that they should be prepared to bribe the agent in Puerto Vallarta to let them back on the plane to the U.S. Once in the U.S., she said, it would be up to the U.S. Customs and Immigration officer as to whether or not they would be hassled and to what degree.

They left yesterday, got through Mexican customs without a hitch, and are enjoying their 10th anniversary today.

I’ll give a report as to what happens when they come back late next Sunday afternoon. Keep your fingers crossed.

This is just another instance of the incompetence of our own government and its employees. The DIL wasted her $85 $90 ($75 for expedited and $15 for overnight); do you think she has a prayer getting it back? Is it even worth trying? And her long-awaited 10th anniversary trip is being somewhat marred by what she has gone through already and the stress that is weighing on her wondering what’s going to happen when she tries to come back. And do you think one single government employee gives a rat’s hind end about her plight? The incompetence and lack of concern is appalling given the amount of tax money we pay these swine.

The only time I’ve ever found that government employees are actually on the ball is if they’re trying to screw you. In fact, I’ve come up with what I call the Eades Law of Government Hiring. Everyone who is hired by the government is given a lengthy test. The ones found to be abysmally stupid and lazy are directed to the branches of government set up to help people. The ones found to be smart, ambitious, and eager to work are directed to the branches of government set up to hassle people, i.e., the IRS, the FTC, and other ‘regulatory’ outfits. It’s a real shame.