...in Indianapolis!!
You are all now saying, "Pray tell, Daniel Cannon, why you would be spending your Ireland vacation in Indianapolis, Indiana." I'll feed you baby birds - bear with me and I will tell you a story about dysfunctional government bureaucracy and red tape, poor poor poor customer service, and my mom calling the White House. Oh yes, the White House.
It was decided over Christmas break that the Cannon's needed to take a vacation to an exotic location. For years we discussed traveling to Ireland to see where our roots came from...it was an easy decision. Dad purchased 5 tickets using his frequent flyer miles and I bought my own so I could collect a few thousand more miles for myself. This was to be my parents first ever trip to international soils and there was much excitement. On February 20 my parents submitted two applications for US Passports at the Vincennes Post Office. My mom inquired as to whether or not she should get the expedited service for an extra fee. Because it was 10 weeks or so before our date of travel she was told that would not be necessary. "You'll get them in plenty of time. It should take only 8 weeks." Fair enough - save a little money and get them in plenty of time. We waited with anticipation for May 6, the day which we would all fly from Chicago to Dublin for a week of rain soaked travel, touring, beer drinking, and singing.
Fast forward several weeks - it is toward the end of April and no passports. Dad started tracking the passport progress from the Nation Passport Office's website. "Passport application in process." During this check it was discovered that the lead time for receiving a passport had increased from 8 weeks to 10 weeks. Looking at a calendar that 10 weeks was up right at our travel date. We had 2 weeks left. No big deal - we'll just expedite the process by calling the passport hot line, which is what my dad did every day for two weeks. This consisted of being on hold for roughly 20 minutes at a time, having to listen to recorded messages about how swamped the passport office was with a flood of requests and that they were working overtime and hiring fresh faces to make sure passports were received before time to travel. There were several times when dad thought he was at the point of talking to a warm body that the system would kick him off because "the volume of calls was too great and you need to call back at a later time." CLICK. What a crock. When a human voice finally showed up on the other end it was usually saying "We are doing the best we can." At one point the New Orleans office was offline for 2 days and no communication could flow in, stopping any effort to communicate urgent requests.
The passport office can submit an internal expedite request every 72 hours. Our first one went out on April 25 and we were supposed to hear something within 2-4 days. Another late week request was submitted. The weekend came and nothing was communicated back to us regarding the application status. On Monday April 30, a mere 6 days before our travel date, we again called with another expedite request. That evening all I could think about was getting something else going that may speed this through. I got one of the executive assistants involved at my company who made a few phone calls for us. She even sat in on a call with my dad and I to get more information. With her persistence we were able to move to a second level of management where we talked to this guy who was pretty much unwilling to give us any information. After wearing him down a bit we got him to reveal some information that was "government jargon that we wouldn't understand." It appears that our expedite requests were DENIED and that our next submission could be on Thursday. His suggestion was to go to the Chicago passport office and apply in person. This of course would require making an appointment. When my dad looked into this there were no available time slots to make an appointment. We communicated this with the passport office and they apologized that there wasn't anything they could do about it, but if we called between 6 and 7:30 the next morning we may be able to slip in due to a cancellation - great...that's likely to happen when spending 20 minutes on hold waiting to talk to someone.
Fed up with talking to people unwilling to help, mom called one of our state representatives who gave us a direct line to the office of one of our Indiana Congressman. His assistant made some calls for us on Thursday and got the ball rolling. By Friday our passports were "pulled out" of the system and were being expedited. By Friday evening we had tracking numbers and were crossing our fingers. They were to arrive sometime Saturday afternoon via Fed Ex. My parents have never had luck with Fed Ex, so they were a bit worried. While tracking the passports it was discovered that the tracking number they gave for dad's package was not valid. Calls back to the passport office went unanswered. We crossed our fingers that someone was smart enough to consolidate packages and that both would be together. By Saturday morning the Fed Ex driver arrived carrying one package - with one passport. Calls back to the Congressman's office, Fed Ex, and the passport office all dead ended. It appears that dad's passport didn't make it out of New Orleans - possibly sitting on someones desk who didn't realize that the passports needed to go out TOGETHER. What else is a person to do? Well, call the White House.
Yes, mom called the White House. They directed her to the State Department, where she talked to a guy who stated that the New Orleans office should have been working and that he didn't understand why phone calls and e-mails were going unanswered. He could try and get the passport to us, but it would more than likely be on Monday. His sarcastic remark of "You should have called me earlier" didn't really sit well with mom, saying that she shouldn't have needed to call in the first place, that if everyone in the process had done their job she wouldn't be in this desperate situation.
At this point the chances of a trip to Ireland were all but faded. It was discussed among the family that everyone but dad go ahead and leave Sunday for Dublin and that if the State Department followed through with their promise to deliver the passport on Monday that dad would catch a late flight Monday and join us later. This of course was an unacceptable option because the purpose of this trip was for EVERYONE to go. We decided to cancel our trip all together and do something in the States.
Most of all the Saturday activity was going on while I was driving up to Chicago for a wedding. All I could see were Fed Ex trucks all over the road that did not have my dad's passport in them. Upon arrival at the hotel after the wedding and after canceling my own flight I got in an elevator to join my friends at the wedding reception - there was a kid in the elevator wearing a green Dublin Ireland shirt. Talk about putting salt in your wounds.
So that is how it came about that the Cannon family is spending their Irish holiday in Indianapolis. I'll update you during the course of the week so you can see how we are coping with our failed attempts at visiting the Emerald Isle. Until then, please submit your passport applications now for any future trips you may be taking - keeping in mind that it could be several years before you'll receive them. AND make sure you take the expedited delivery option!
