When Applying For A Passport, Make Sure This Doesn’t Happen To You

We’re coming up on the warmer months of the year. More people will be going outside to enjoy what our state has to offer. Walking, boating, even mowing the lawn, we’ll have more reasons and better weather to be outside. 

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It also means a lot of people will be traveling. Vacation plans are being finalized as we’ll be breaking out the long winter huddle we’ve been contained to. 

If you are trying to get a passport, a little advice, follow up. My wife and I recently applied for passport cards. If you’re not familiar, these are wallet sized plastic cards that will allow you to enter Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and some Caribbean Countries by land or sea.  

The key differences between the passport card and the passport book are that you cannot fly into or out of a country with the passport card, you can only enter by land or sea, and the cost. The passport cards are only $30 while the books are $130. 

Late last week, my wife received an email giving her an update on her process and an application number. I didn’t get one of those emails. We waited a few more days, and finally yesterday she gave me the phone number to the National Passport Information Center. 

To be honest, I was kind of dreading making that call, I figured it would take me forever to get an actual human being on the phone. To my surprise, after a few prompts that required me to respond by pushing a number, I was delivered to a human being. 

His name was Nick, and he let me know that when the information had been input to the database, my first name was misspelled. He told me that would cause the process to slow down, but he assured me he fixed it for me. 

Nick also gave me a website so that I could keep an eye out on my application process myself. The website is passportstatus.state.gov. Upon putting my information in, I noticed right away why I didn’t get an email; my email address had one too many “e’s” in one part of my address. 

I corrected that on the website and will have to keep a closer eye on this moving forward.  

We applied for our passports in person, because we learned that the picture needs to be a particular size, and honestly it seemed like it may be more of a trick getting the size right versus having the office just take it for us.  

So, if you have applied, or plan to apply for a passport, make sure you keep checking your status. I learned firsthand this week that a wrong letter or too many letters can have your passport hanging in limbo, which is not where you want that to be.