Ah, the joys of traveling outside the U.S. We’re leaving on Sunday to travel to the Netherlands for my wife’s parent’s 50th wedding anniversary. Over the last month, I’ve said that to a long string of people working for the government in one way or another. Except for one, none of those conversations ever needed to happen.
When you apply for a passport, you learn that you can then track the status of your passport online. When I read “track the status,” I think of the type of system that FedEX and USPS provide for tracking overnight packages: constant updates. Ah, if it were only so.
Instead, the system perpetually tells you that your passport “is currently being processed.” I received my passport two days ago. The system still shows that my passport “is currently being processed.” I guess there’s some chance that Sunday, I may learn that the passport I’m holding doesn’t really exist.
But, I get ahead of myself. Two weeks ago, I called to check on the status and was told the same thing. I keep checking the passport tracking system and was told the same thing. Last Friday, I checked again. My passport was “currently being processed.”
And then an hour later, the mail guy delivered a letter. It wasn’t being processed. They didn’t have some paperwork they needed. The letter had been sent a week before. It was about this time, I started comparing the passport tracking system with others.
My wife’s unoccupied parked vehicle was hit in December. Each time my insurance company updated the status of my claim, any relevant documents were uploaded. And, I had the option of receving all of that by email. In the case my passport, if the same were true, I would have known almost a week earlier that there was a problem, what the problem was and how to solve it. And, the State Department wouldn’t have paid to priority mail me the letter.
Once I received the letter, I overnighted the paperwork via the Post Office. On Monday, it was delivered (according to the USPS tracking system) but the passport tracking system still showed my passport was “currently being processed.” When I called, the customer service people who answer the phones had no way to confirm they’d received the letter.
It was a striking contrast with tracking the replacement paperwork I sent them. The USPS website told me my overnight was accepted at the post office (4/13 at 4:36pm), processed at a sorting facility (4/13 6:27pm), left that facility (4/13 no time) and so on until it was delivered (4/16 at 11:14am).
If the State Department system did those those things –actually tracked the status and gave you access to any letters they send out about problems– their call volume would drop tremendously, people would get better service and the State Department would save a significant amount of money that could be used to handle other parts of their mission. Foreign Policy published an article in the middle of this that brought a list of problems the Army is handling in Afghanistan specifically because the State Department isn’t (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/11/state_of_disrepair)
Almost a month after we started this process, we recieved our last two passports two days ago. It finally took calling one of our Senators to get things sorted out. A shout out to Kisa and Eva at Colorado Senator Michael Bennet’s office and for the staff at the Cheyenne Mountain Post Office here in Colorado Springs for making it happen on time.
And a question. If your customers need updates on what you’re doing for them, do you have a tracking system (besides people answer or not the phone) and (if so) does it look more like the State Department’s or FedEx’s system?