Passport Expediters

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Of course, nothing works exactly to bureaucratic form, and every little quirk makes a passportless, visaless, time-pressed business traveler quake. By the time I returned from the post office, I had already received an email from Travisa saying that it had received my documents. That cavalier white lie worried me. So did the fact that the Travisa rep had urged me to lie on my Indian visa application by putting my soon-to-be-voided passport number on one of the forms. And like most passport expediters, Travisa promises to email you every step of the way. It didn’t.

When September 20 had come and gone without my hearing from Travisa about my passport, I called the company.

“It’s all taken care of,” said a different voice. “We sent your passport over for the visa.”

“You didn’t send an email like you promised,” I replied.

“We don’t do that until the end of the entire process, sir,” came the answer.

“Oh, okay,” I said sheepishly. “I assume we’re good for getting everything back to me within the next seven days, right?”

“Seven days?” came the reply. “You should have told us you needed rush service.”

“But I did. I paid the rush fee and gave you the deadline in my cover letter too.”

“Well, I better get on this. What’s your file number?”

Despite the communication breakdown, Travisa was as good as its promise. Better, in fact. My papers arrived a day early, just 13 working days from the start of the process.

The bill: $519.95, which included $127 to the feds for my expedited passport renewal and $90 to the Indian government for a one-year visa. Travisa’s take: $179 to secure my passport, $99 to acquire my visa, $19.95 to return my paperwork by overnight courier, and a mysterious $5 “check writing fee.”

All’s well that ends well, I guess. But I wish Travisa had been a little better at communicating—and at understanding that those of us who don’t normally play the expediting game are apprehensive about websites that promise bureaucratic miracles.

By the way, I wrote this column sitting in Seat 8B on the flight to Mumbai. Turns out I was so paranoid about getting my passport and visa that I forgot to reserve Seat 2B.

The Fine Print

The State Department announced last month that the passport crisis was over and processing times had returned to normal. Don’t believe it. Michigan-based frequent flyer Mel Ettenson emailed me last week with his tale of woe: He had to enlist the assistance of his congressman to spring his passport from the bureaucratic slush pile. “He has a staffer specifically assigned [to passport issues]. She found it buried along with many other renewals at the Passport Processing Center in Charleston, South Carolina.” To find a passport expediter, consult the listings at the National Association of Passport and Visa Services.

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