My Ultimate #ParentFail Expired Passport Story
We were flying to Costa Rica in 5 days. It was 11:32 PM and as I was laying in bed I turned to Stacy and said, “We’ve checked all the passports, right?”
I opened the scans from my phone of the passports for my kids and as I flip through the images, I said, “That’s an old picture of Ryan. (He’s 12 years old now.) It says the expiration date was April 17th of… wait, this year? Wait a minute… this is his old passport right?”
Nope, his passport had expired a month and a half earlier…
My wife immediately sat up in bed in a panic and we both started googling and searching for what we would need to rush an emergency passport and somehow salvage our family trip.
The Ultimate #ParentFail...
We didn't realize our son's passport expired last month.
We are flying to Costa Rica in 5 days!
Yes this is a true story and as I’m typing this, it amazingly has a happy ending, but oh how I wished I would have had someone be able to give me some advice on what to expect and how to navigate an emergency passport.
So this post is intended to help save a future parent the headache of navigating the government passport 30+ minute hold times and avoid all the mistakes we made along the way trying to get said emergency passport.
What I wish I had known about Emergency Passports
The first thing we did was search online for emergency passport information. There were nearly a dozen online sponsored ads leading to websites that charge $600+ to help you secure an emergency passport. We tried using the online chat and looked at online reviews of multiple agencies.
There seemed to a variety of 4+ star reviews about emergency passport companies but with more investigation it seemed like all of the recent reviews of these agencies were 1 star, telling people the company was a scam and just trying to take your money.
We decided to try and get some sleep and not rush to spend $600-$900+ on a done for you emergency passport service.
At 6 AM mountain time we were up and trying to call the passport hotline to see if we could schedule an appointment.
First big lesson…
The passport phone line is bombarded with calls. If you are lucky enough to be placed in the hold group you will wait at least 30 minutes to talk to a live person. It took several calls hanging up on us before we were lucky enough to be placed on hold to wait our turn.
After about 35 minutes we were greeted by a very grumpy person who seemed annoyed that we had called. She asked where we were located and then when we were traveling. We told her the date of travel which was in 5 days. She typed that into her system and a few seconds later told us that there were no appointments available.
I replied, “But there has to be at least somewhere in the country that there is an appointment available?”
She answered, “There are no appointments available at any office before the dates you gave me.”
Surely there has to be a way to problem solve, so I asked her if there was availability a day or two after our travel date. Maybe I could arrive a few days later.
I then asked, “Well, when is the earliest appointment we could get at any location?”
Her reply, “I can’t help you with that. I can’t input a different date in the system or I will get in trouble. You’ll have to call back in and then give the next operator a new date.”
She was dead serious and as nice as I tried to be on the phone, there was nothing to change her mind. She then told me to call back in and try a different travel date. Then she disconnected to be ever so helpful to the next lucky person.
Stacy and I looked at each other in disbelief and I told jokingly said, “Well, so you’ve seen the movie Home Alone, right? Ryan is old enough to hold his own her at the house with a BB gun and everything will be fine when we get home.”
Stacy was unimpressed by my dad joke and started to dial again. After about 8 tries, she was able to get placed in the on-hold group. The on-hold music is tolerable. After 30+ minutes we were able to connect with a more friendly agent.
We decided we would move the travel date 2 days later. We could play this game.
The agent placed the date in the computer and a few seconds later replied, “Well, I have a 9:30 appointment in El Paso Texas in about 2 hours from now.”
At first I thought he was trying to make us laugh by showing some personality. But no, he was dead serious about the appointment and location. Apparently he hadn’t passed Geography in Jr High since we had already told him we were in Salt Lake and nothing short of a Star Trek beam me up Scottie event was going to allow us to be in El Paso in 2 hours.
We asked him what other times were available and he apologized and said there were no other appointments available anywhere in the country. He told us we could try calling in again and we might get lucky, but of course, there was nothing he could do at this point.
He then confirmed that he could not re-enter a date and search for another appointment.
So, we disconnected and began to wait on hold again for another 30+ minutes and was greeted by what I will call my friendliest agent. I told him this was my third call and what had happened with the last two tries. He laughed when I told him that I had learned that we should list the furthest out date possible to beat the government system and show all the possible passport appointments.
Our original travel date was on the 12th and so we set the date as the 22nd of the month. He then proceeded to tell me he was seeing multiple appointment options. He then told me that it was a LIVE appointment system and that they go fast. I told him to tell me what the earliest possible appointment was ANYWHERE in the country, hoping some other poor parent had taken the time in El Paso.
He replied that there was a 9:30 appointment in Washington DC showing for tomorrow. I nearly leapt out of my chair and said, “We’ll do it. Book it.”
He then asked for the last 3 letters of my son’s name and one other question. We took less than 20 seconds and as he was about to hit submit, he said, “Ugh, that appointment just disappeared and is no longer available.”
He apologized and then we joked that getting an appointment was harder than securing Taylor Swift tickets.
We were getting along well though and he then told me that there was an appointment that just appeared for the 20th in Denver. I could hardly believe he was offering a 2nd option so I immediately said, “We’ll take it. Do it!”
I felt like I had won the lottery with an appointment 13 days from now. We would only miss 8 days of our 12 day trip. I didn’t care at that point though.
I started to notify my wife that I would be able to bring him down for the last few days of the trip with me. We had come to terms with the fact that our vacation would not be the way we had planned.
Grandma to the Rescue
A few hours later I received a call from my mother. I was expecting to receive a lecture about being a responsible parent but instead she told me she had called every Senator and Congressman in Utah. She had connected with an intern who happened to answer the phone at Mitt Romney’s office.
She learned that their office was currently working with more than 400 people who were in the same situation. They had multiple people working to help. She emailed my mom a list of things to collect, a few forms to fill out and told us to email her back.
I filled out a simple 2 page form. The first page was basic information about who needed the emergency passport and the 2nd page was a place to write our sad story and plea for help. Within 10 minutes I had sent a scan of these forms to Eliana and followed her instructions in the email with a phone call to verify that she had received them.
She answered the phone after 1 ring and told me she had received the forms. She told me she would get on the phone and would work to help secure an appointment. She was kind, empathetic and sincerely wanted to help. She told us she would personally call several of the passport agencies and assist.
About 2 hours later I received an email from Eliana telling me that she had heard back from the Denver Passport office and they had provided her with a 9:30 appointment for us on the 14th, two days after our trip was supposed to start.
I thanked her and asked her if there was anything I could do to say thank you. I offered to buy her dinner and she just laughed and told me she was happy to help.
Our Adventure to the Denver Passport Office
So if you ever find yourself in this situation, you will need to make sure you have all of your forms and paperwork in perfect order. We learned that since Stacy would be flying to Costa Rica and not able to attend the passport appointment we would need a notarized form that gave permission from her to issue the child passport. We also needed to have a photocopy of her ID. We used her driver’s license.
This form an be found on the instruction list at the passport website but you will need to go to your county offices or somewhere with a notary. They will stamp a paper and sign that you have permission.
The Weber County office people were amazing. They had the official passport form to fill out, they took a passport photo for us and charged us half of what Walgreens charges. They reviewed all our paperwork and even gave us an envelope to put everything in and wished us good luck.
A few days later I dropped off my wife and daughters at the airport and then the next day my son and I flew to Denver for our passport appointment.
Our appointment was for 9:30 AM but we arrived at 8:35 AM. When we arrived at the 6th floor office a friendly guard opened the door for us and asked us for the last digits of our confirmation code. They looked us up in their system and found my son’s name. They then had us scan our bags through a small TSA style scanner.
We were then invited to move to the next room and stand in a line that resembles a small DMV. There are 10 windows that have people helping.
I felt comforted that I wasn’t the only parent standing in line with their kid. After about 20 minutes in line we were called to a window and a friendly lady took my paperwork through a window and started to review everything.
She reviewed every item on the paperwork, verified my wife’s ID and my ID. Because I had booked a new flight for my son and I to fly out later that evening, I didn’t have a printout of our proof of travel within 12 days. The lady provided me with an email address to send screenshots of our flight info to include with the package of documents. I realized that it would have been helpful to have printed out flight confirmations.
She also reviewed all the notary signatures and then after about 4 minutes printed a receipt with a number and handed me all of the documents back. She said to take a seat and wait for our number to be called.
About 20 minutes later our number was called DMV style from the TV board and we went to the window to be helped. I handed the stack of documents to a friendly man and he reviewed everything again. Everything checked out and he then had me pay a $195 fee and handed me a receipt with instructions to come back at 2 PM to pick up the new passport.
I breathed a sigh of relief, praised Eliana the Intern’s name and headed out the door. We took an Uber to the nearby theater and were able to catch a 10:30 AM movie. We grabbed lunch and returned to the passport office at 1:50 PM with what appeared to be all of our friends from the line we had been in before.
We went through the same door, scanned our bags and stood in the same line once again. After about 10 minutes in line, we handed our return slip through the window again and 30 seconds later they passed us a passport book.
They asked us to review everything before leaving and said if there was anything wrong, to please come back up to the window. Otherwise we were free to leave and enjoy our trip.
So what did I learn from this experience?
Our government has no idea how to be efficient with scheduling emergency passport appointments and needs more passport offices. The office was simple and there seems to be no good reason that any population center in the United States with a few million people should not have a passport office.
I also learned that the people who work at the offices are friendly and are doing a great job. The call center people need an overhaul. It is insane that in order to get an appointment you have to call your senator and hope that they have a great intern who answer the phone. Without Eliana the intern, there is no way our trip would have worked out.
I also realized that there is absolutely no reason to pay $600+ for a hope and a prayer that a business will be able to secure an emergency passport for you. My advice would be to save your $600 for a flight to a passport office somewhere once you have the appointment.
There was no secret door or side office that these emergency passport people had to be able to help a guy like me. I don’t know if they are scamming people, but if you have a day or two you would be better to go to the appointment yourself and not depend on FEDEX to deliver your passport.
Hopefully this doesn’t happen to you, but if it does, I hope you can learn from my #ParentFail and be able to have the luck of having Eliana the Intern help save the day.
Hopefully Eliana will consider a career with the passport agency in the future and have the chance to overhaul a broken phone and scheduling system.
I’m just grateful for good people and for the fact that I’ll be boarding a plane in a few more hours and joining up with the rest of my family to enjoy a day of river rafting in one of the most beautiful places in Costa Rica on the Pacuare River.
