My passport was due to expire mid-year so at the start of the year, I applied for renewal at the DFA’s vaunted online system. I found that I can only schedule an appointment by the end of March. I learned later that there’s a 3-month lag time in appointments. No problem. I’ve no travel plans in the next few months so I set my appointment.
Wrong! Two weeks ago, I learned I’ll be heading off to Vietnam courtesy of the company! I estimated the delivery of the passport given my appointment and there was no way my new passport will be available by the travel date. Not good! Fortunately, the company has good travel agents. They were able to schedule me to an interview this morning (how, I don’t know). So there I was at DFA at 7AM on a weekend morning.
To DFA’s credit, everything was pretty much well-planned. There was a separate gate for agency-assisted passport processing. Once inside, it was air-conditioned and there were benches. Facilitators also helped people move along the line and up counters for pre-processing. After pre-processing, you go up and inside the main facility.
If you’re agency-assisted, you skip two steps and proceed directly to data capture. You get a queue number, sit on one of the benches, and wait till your number is displayed on two big trackers. The one problem I saw was that some benches had no direct view of the trackers.
There were over 20 processing stations so it was relatively quick. Pretty soon it was my turn. The processor keyed-in my details, I double-checked, took my photo, and then my thumb prints. And that was it. I was done in about 2 hours. Not bad DFA!
Now I wonder if non-agency assisted processing is as efficient.