While I realize there is an exceptional amount of citizens applying for passports at the current time, I have never in my life had as poor service as I experienced with the above agency! I applied for passports for my husband and myself on 3/10/07 for a travel date of 5/27/07. I was assured by the local post office that this was ample time for processing and to use routine service. As instructed, I visited the above website to check on the status of our passport applications and it stated that our applications were being processed.

It is now May 21st and we are scheduled to leave for our trip on May 27th still with no passports. I called the passport information hotline and just kept getting recorded messages.

As a last resort, I called the local post office and they, in turn, contact travel.state.gov. I was informed by the employee at the post office that this Government Agency had not even begun to process our applications! The post office has assured me that I will receive the passports in the next 2 days.

To make matters worse, if we do not receive our passports by our travel dates, we were informed by the agency we booked our vacation with that we will be charged a $600.00 penalty between the airline and the resort. We should not be responsible for mistakes made by our so-called Government! Not even the decency to answer the phone or e mails that I sent to them. OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK COSTING US, THE PEOPLE for attempting to follow proper procedures and this is the example set for us!