OMG it never ends

[TammyB]

yeah sure what the h*ll.. LOL.. trust me I'm trying to figure a way not to have to make the drive, but so far it's not looking good.

[TATrisha]

How far away from Chicago are you?

[TammyB]

it's about a four hour drive.

[Rachelle E.]

I know i'm a little late on this...but I just wanted to say I'm SO sorry for all this passport drama!!! You poor girls!! That's a bummer that you have to drive all the way to Chicago for yours Tammy. :-( but I'm sure it will be a relief to have it finished...in your hands once and for all!!

 

Personally, I was jaded by the passport agency long ago! When I applied for my very first passport (I was 16). We submitted everything at the end of October for a trip I was taking in February, then we waited, and waited...and waited...and waited. We called to check on things are were told it's common for several weeks to go by without any news or status about the application. Finally, it's the end of January and still no passport and no news. As we're calling and trying to figure things out, we get a letter later that week saying (in VERY vague, diplomatic, "we don't want to take blame for this" terms) that the application I submitted was "lost/stolen and I will need to re-submit everything, sorry for the trouble, thank you very much!" WTF?!?! This was two weeks before I was supposed to leave the country! Why didn't they think to notify us before then? MONTHS have gone by!! Anyway, it was a mad scramble to try and get everything taken care of in time. My poor mother had to spend hours on the phone and in lines at the passport office trying to sort things out. We even had to get my grandmother to go to the office in Cali to get a new copy of my birth certificate (I was born in the Bay Area) - since they had lost the one we had sent with the application! (WHY do they make you send originals of all your super important legal documents?!?!) It was a nightmare. It also cost an extra $300 to have everything expedited etc. I finally got it about 3 days before I was supposed to leave. Even after all that, my mom spent the next 5 months submittimg receipts and claims to the agency to get reimbursed for all her additional expenses.

 

Whew! Ok, so that was a LOT! But that's also the reason that I made David submit our renewals in March for Monica's Sept wedding! And why I insisted that we use priority mail w/ a tracking number for both the outgoing and return envelopes!! I want to know where those suckers are at ALL times!!

 

So the lesson here for all you girls who don't have passports or know someone who doesn't have a passport. . .APPLY NOW! Lol!!! So what if you get it a year ahead of time...at least you'll have it and you can avoid all this stress!

[TATrisha]

4 hours. Ouch. Well, you could take the water taxi thingy back to Michigan! That is, if you wanted to spend a lot of money to get sea sick!

[TammyB]

Rachelle,, think the goverment would reimburse us for the mileage and time off work that is required to go? Ummm yeah probably not, yet when you owe on your taxes you better pay by "x" date or they start charging you interest....

[Rachelle E.]

Lol! Yeah....no kidding!! Honestly I think the main reason my mom got reimbursed is the fact that they actually LOST all our paperwork...so we had no idea if it got thrown away, if someone had stolen it and was using it for identity theft purposes etc. That being said...they dragged their feet every step of the way and it literally took months to get the $$ back.

 

I really feel for you with all this Tammy. What a PITA! On the upside...maybe you and Cain could have a nice dinner somewhere in Chicago and call it a "getaway"! ;-)

[TATrisha]

I highly recommend the Grand Lux Cafe.

[~Melissa~]

sorry to hear about your troubles tammy... darn government. you would think they would take everything so seriously considerng it is your passport. 2nd time mess up isnt cool. i'd be pissed off. grrrr

[LCBride2007]

I GOT MY PASSPORT! Whew - I feel a little better. Only a little, because my groom to be doesn't have one, and has to reapply because apparently he did have one, but must have lost it - so now he has to apply for the duplicate, or whatever.

 

So he goes in today and sends in the application. I said "how much did that cost you?" - he said "just the $11 to overnight it." I brought up how it costs lots of $$ to expidite - but he didn't do that, just wrote "expidite" on the envelope. Now, maybe they will do it since he did apply in April, but lord ... I may not be able to have my FI at my wedding!