Renewing a U.S. passport

My husband, Clyde, and I sent our passports to the National Passport Processing Center in Philadelphia for renewal on Friday, June 6, 2008. We used Express Mail and included an additional $14.85 for Express Mail for their return; we did not pay the additional $60 for expedited service.

The National Passport Information Center, or NPIC (877/487-2778), told us to expect the new passports in about four weeks. New passports were delivered to us on Saturday, June 14 — a turnaround time of less than a week!

When we originally went to the U.S. Department of State homepage for passport information (http://travel.state.gov/passport) and followed the link for renewals, we were met with two surprises.

The first was that one no longer can request a 48-page passport. Repeated phone calls to The NPIC gave the same negative reply. In addition, I was told and had it confirmed by a supervisor that we could not even request that extra visa pages be inserted in our new passports until we needed them — this despite the online notice on the State Department page entitled How to Add Extra Pages to Your U.S. Passport: “You travel extensively and need a new passport. You may request more Visa pages in your passport at no additional cost. To do so, please attach a signed request for additional Visa pages to be added to your application. Note: 48-page passports are no longer available in the U.S. or abroad.”

We printed our DS-82 application-by-mail renewal forms and, on a separate sheet, the above statement (we figured we might as well show them what we were asking for from their own website), then sent them off with a handwritten note requesting extra pages.

Mirabile dictu! Each passport book has 52 numbered pages. If you subtract the eight numbered pages of State Department literature, that’s 44 blank visa pages.

JANE B. HOLT

Hinesburg, VT