Do The Passport Shuffle
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007While on vacation, I was volunteered to go install our software at a customer site in the USA. I was to leave within 2 weeks of returning to work. One problem, my passport had expired a year go.
Turns out you can put an urgent application in if you have proof of travel arrangements (plane tickets in hand, etc). For an extra fee of course. For this to work one must use the online passport application form instead of filling one out with pen and paper.
The online application is a bit of a joke. You need to set up an ePass account with the federal government website infrastructure first, and then use that to log into the Passport Canada site and fill out a java applet based web form. They don’t do a whole lot with that other than tie it to your ePass and let you update/store/print multiple passport applications. A bit of minimal validation is done on the form, not for content but more along the lines of making sure the required fields have some text in them.
Then you have to set up your printer prefs very specifically and mess with your onscreen font size 17 billion times before the print preview approximates their examples of what they will accept. Print it out. Notice a problem with the margins or alignment. Do this again 3 times.
Run down to the London Drugs and get a passport photo for $14. Argue with the clerk that you definitely do NOT need to take your glasses off, so long as there is no glare and the eyes are visible in the picture. Get some more guff that they might need to get some makeup powder out to take the shine off my forehead or front-top of my bald plateau there. Tell them to aim the flash correctly and there won’t be any such problem.
Get the pictures taken finally. They look fine.
Off to the optometrist, get the application and photo signed without incident.
Head down to the south passport office, because the main downtown one got flooded out the previous day. Stand in line outside in the rain. Wait 5-10 min before getting in the door (sign on it says capacity 60 people). Greeted by a commisionar who asks to see the applications. Guy in front of me has his filled out by hand. Off you go to that line there. Mine is ‘online’ I go to a different table. Person there gives my application a look over, clips my id documents to it, gives me a queue id and says to watch the queue board as it’ll be just a few minutes.
I sit down. 30 seconds later, first update of the queue board, my number is up. I get up and go to the wicket. Get dirty looks from the ~60 people sitting there who have been waiting for probably hours at this point.
Two minutes at the wicket and I’m done. They scan the application in. I don’t think they scanned in the supporting id, nor did they scan or keep the photocopy (both sides) of my supporting id that I had brought either. Ok, whatever.
So. That was last Wed. I’m to pick up my passport this Fri at the downtown office. You remember, the one that was flooded the day before my application submit dance, above?
Turns out it was sorta open for a few days and then the government union wankers complained about black mould and got the building closed down completely. For who knows how long.
Alrighty. So where do I go to pick the passport up then? South office?
Google turns up nothing useful. The various news articles about the Harry Hays building being closed all say “government officials were not available for comment”. Passport Canada website says :
Screw that, I’m not going to Edmonton.
Dig around a bit more. Call the Service Canada 800 number to see if they know. Very nice people on the other end. Not helpful at all, they don’t know anything.
Google for the Harry Hays local number, and Passport Canada local numbers. Nada.
(yes, Google, you are a verb. Deal with it.)
Back to the Passport Canada website. Find the 800 number. As expected, it rings busy.
After several tries I get through the busy signals. Two minutes of telephone press 1 for this 2 for that hell and I get to a point where it says it would like to connect me to a person but the hold lines are too deep. Call back later. Click.
Busy busy busy, thru, short circuit the tree, hold queues full, click.
Try again in a few min. Get thru, aha! Only 25th in the queue.
22 minutes on hold and I’m talking to a real live Passport Canada person. Yay.
So. Where do I go?
“It depends”.
If the Harry Hays building is open on Friday, go there. That’s where the Calgary passports are printed. If it is still closed, go to the south passport office. In the afternoon. Why the afternoon? The passports will be printed that morning in Edmonton and sent down to the south Calgary passport office, and that’ll take a few hours.
Oh. Wunderbar. Fine.
I thank her for the information and suggest that she try to get the Passport Canada web page updated with this extra bit of info, to help people avoid the telephone fun I just had getting thru to her.
Oh no she can’t do that. If she did, by the time it was approved etc the Harry Hays building was likely to be open again. Yeah, I understand. Hate it, but I understand. Gah.
