US Passport Renewal- Are You Seeing Delays?

[jeffandgop]

The span time from the time when you submit your US passport renewal to the Chiang Mai Consulate and receive notification from them it is available to be picked up has been 2 weeks- even their own website says as such.

 

My wife submitted her renewal paperwork more than 3 weeks ago and still no passport. We contacted the consulate earlier this week and they would only say that "it is being mailed to our office"...no other details, no ETA, etc.  Nothing since.

 

Has anyone else processed a renewal in the month of January?

[lopburi3]

Can only point out that flights are full of people this time of the year so baggage may not the the airlines priority (moving people pays them more).  And three day government shutdown may have also caused issues beyond a lost day of work (although received my tax refund on the 31st which was extremely fast).

[Ajvat37]

I had to get a new passport from Chiang Mai immigration in the middle of January and it was ready in 6 days

[Jeffrey346]

Got mine in 2 weeks, but not from Chiang Mia.. from BKK.

[taxout]

I believe you can check the status online: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/after/status.html This worked for me when I applied for renewal overseas. If it shows the passport's been sent out, then assume it's the US postal service, which has been very very slow in the past year serving Asia. Four weeks from the US may be the new normal.

[ubonjoe]

8 hours ago, taxout said:

I believe you can check the status online: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/after/status.html This worked for me when I applied for renewal overseas. If it shows the passport's been sent out, then assume it's the US postal service, which has been very very slow in the past year serving Asia. Four weeks from the US may be the new normal.

When you apply here your passport is not sent by mail. It is sent by courier directly to the embassy.

[taxout]

I know you don't get your passport directly by mail from the U.S., but I somehow thought they were indeed mailed not couriered from the passport plant to the embassy/comsulate, though that may vary by country.

[jeffandgop]

As of today I’m still waiting to receive notification from the CM Consulate. It’s just about 4 weeks since the application was submitted. 

[jeffandgop]

I wrote another email to the Consulate today and within one hour their boilerplate notification email to come pick up the passport was in my in box. Wonder if I had not asked this third time were they ever going to notify........