Pay extra to get expedited passports?

[ourbabygirl]

We need to have passports for our family in a couple of months, and if we turn in the paperwork tomorrow, according to the website, we should get them in 6-8 weeks. If it's 8 weeks, we should get them about 11 days before we're supposed to leave for our trip.

Anyone know if we can expedite them after the fact, if we decide not to spend the money to expedite them now? It's about $80 per person to expedite, so it adds up fast.

Have any of you applied for passports recently? If so, do you remember how long it took to receive them (if they weren't expedited)?

Thanks for your advice!

[SnuggleBuggles]

Never paid expedited and always gotten them in less than 2 weeks.


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[gatorsmom]

We didn't pay expedited fees either and got them in 4 weeks.

[georgiegirl]

Ours took less than 4 weeks and that was during the holiday season. We did not pay for expedited service.


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[Liziz]

I too would skip the expedited. You have wiggle room even if it takes the full 8 weeks (and like others, mine nor my children's have ever taken the full time). It adds up really quickly to expedite!

[ourbabygirl]

Thanks, Everyone.
So we didn't see until now that we all need to be there in person to apply, so we had to make an appt. to do that in a couple of days. Seems like overkill to make the kids be there, as well (we need to take them out of school since their Sat. appts. are full). We've been delaying taking the pics because this trip is supposed to be a surprise for the kids, and now that we have to take them in to the office to apply, I'm not sure what to tel them.

[AnnieW625]

Never paid expedited and always gotten them in less than 2 weeks.


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Yes! I was really surprised how quick we got them. Dh and I applied in mid July and we got them the first week in August.

OP: I would get your photos taken a day or two before your appointment and make sure that the background in the photo is completely flat because if the background isn’t flat they will reject your photos and you will be stuck paying $15 per photo. When we had ours taken at Costco right before we went and the background wasn’t completely flat and I didn’t notice it until the agent told us they wouldn’t be accepted and I wasn’t getting out of line and to go get them redone at Costco so I bit the bullet and paid the $15 pp fee.


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[dogmom]

We just did it at a post office next town over, are you sure there is no post office near you that can do it? It’s not overkill, way to many custody issues and fake passports. Kids just don’t have a paper trail and you don’t want to know the other horror stories.

[ett]

We just did it at a post office next town over, are you sure there is no post office near you that can do it? It’s not overkill, way to many custody issues and fake passports. Kids just don’t have a paper trail and you don’t want to know the other horror stories.

We also did it at our post office earlier this year on a Saturday and no appointments were necessary.

[SnuggleBuggles]

We did ds1’s at the post office and absolutely needed an appointment at ours.


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