travel

Woman Reaches Out to NBC6 Responds After Monthslong Wait for Passport

A woman said she waited months for a new passport to arrive. Here’s how NBC6 Responds helped her get answers on the delay.

NBC Universal, Inc.

It will be the trip of a lifetime for Donna Hult and her husband.

"We're actually renting a car and going to travel the countryside," she said. "Very excited!"

A journey abroad is set to happen in October, when they are scheduled to fly into Milan and spend 10 days exploring Italy.

"It's been my lifelong dream to go to Italy one day and here I am," she said. "My husband just retired and we finally have the means to do such a trip."

The trip is so important, Donna said, she applied in person to renew her passport in March of 2022.

"I filled out all the paperwork, brought it with my check for $130 with a completed application, my birth certificate and my previous passbook," she said.

What she thought would take weeks, turned into months of waiting.

"And every day when I checked, I got the response: no information available," she said.

When she was finally able to speak with someone at the National Passport Information Center, Donna said she got the same response.

"No information available, keep trying back," she said she was told.

Months turned into nearly a year and her concern was growing.

"I feel like I have no control," she said. "I'm just helpless.  It's an awful feeling."

So she reached out to NBC6 Responds and asked our team to reach out to the State Department on her behalf.

"My little voice is not working," she said. "It's just not working."

NBC6 Responds shared details of Donna's situation with the Department of State. In a lengthy statement, a spokesperson said in part, "As Americans are traveling internationally again, we are seeing unprecedented demand for passports. In Fiscal Year 2022, we issued more passports than ever before, and we are on track to break that record again for  Fiscal Year 2023. During some weeks this winter, the Department received more than 500,000 applications, the highest number ever for this time of year, exceeding our official projections."

The spokesperson said they could not talk about specific cases, but after we reached out, Donna said she finally got the call from someone at the State Department.

"They told me they sent me a letter in the mail following the receipt of my application ... saying they were denying my application because I did not send my most recent passport," she said. "I'm shocked that that's the case."

Donna said she never received that letter, but she's glad she now knows what's wrong with her application and how to fix it. She will be re-applying and providing the additional information requested, she said.

"I am so relieved and so happy," she said. "I'm finally excited."

"I'm grateful to you and I'm thrilled I'm actually going to be able to go on this trip," she added.

On March 24, the Department of State changed their passport processing times to 10 to 13 weeks for routine processing and 7 to 9 weeks for expedited processing.  You can read more about those changes here.

Passport demand tanked during the pandemic, so the department reassigned or laid off passport staff. They are now working on staffing up, aggressively recruiting and hiring workers and opening a satellite office to help process the large number of applications they are receiving.

If your application has been pending for an extended period, you can call the National Passport Information Center at 1-877-487-2778.

For more information on contacting the department about your passport application, click here.

You can check the status of your passport application by clicking here.

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