Fucking US state department.

[nwhiker]

Goddamn US fucking Department of State passport office.

Dumb fuckers.

We applied for Perry's passport first week of January. He is travelling to the Galapagos in March and the travel agency is demanding the passport like, yesterday, so we paid an extra $65 for expedited. Stupidly, we did not go into the Seattle office, but instead applied at a local county courthouse.

I wasn't there at the application, but was surprised when they came back with Perry's old passport but David and Perry both said that the person had told them it wasn't needed.

The passort was supposed to have been here today at the latest.

Bzzzzt.

Today we got a letter via US mail (even though they have his email AND we signed up for notifications, stupid fuckers) that they did not have "sufficient identification" to process the passport and to mail -snail mail- identification back.

I am SO fucking pissed at the idiot who took the application, at the state department who waited until three days ago to mail out a request for more id, AND at the stupid travel agency who is demanding the passport now, leaving Perry iffy for being able to go on the trip.

Poor boy is crying a bit now. He was really looking forward to this, and unless we can solve it on Monday, I fear we're going to have to pull him from this trip.

Monday I am taking documentation and marching into the Seattle passport office. I'll have to stop by King County and get a new copy of his birth certificate.

I don't know if they'll be able to do anything because of the other application, but we'll see.

Dh is planning on going to the Redmond office, where they applied and demanding resolution. I think going to the Seattle office (where they can at least issue a passport should they do desire, even if he isn't within two weeks of travel time) is a better idea. We'll see.

I am so fucking pissed. I should have been more proactive when I saw they're returned the passport, but at that point, it was too late.

Note: we've applied to this office for three passports with zero problems, and we always got them within two weeks, well in advance of the time predicted.

Comments

[camelsamba]

How very frustrating! I had to renew my passport last year to run in the Detroit half marathon. I started the process with the online forms (not an option for minors IIRC) and was convinced something was going to go wrong - luckily it did not. I hope you are able to get it straightened out - it would totally suck to miss out on the trip because of a bureaucratic snafu!!

[nwhiker]

I was able to get it figured out... or rather the kind people at the Seattle passport office did. They had us re-apply for a passport (without the birth certificate, which was somewhere on the East Coast) and we would have walked out with it in Monday, except they needed time to CANCEL the other one so we didn't end up with two passports!

I'm still annoyed that they waited so long to tell us there was a problem. I'll add that the passport clerk in Seattle could also not figure out what the problem was.