Make or Buy

[kevin_standlee]

Thanks to the feedback from some of you, I decided that going over to the AAA office in Mountain View after work today and paying them $15 for a passport photo was a better deal than trying to figure out how to do it myself, even with a good camera, printer, and photo paper. Now I just have to mail it in. I need to re-read the instructions. I thought i just owed the $110 renewal fee, but one of my co-workers said he'd just applied for a new passport himself and the total cost was more than twice that.

I didn't even feel bad about using the "wrong" AAA office, because the California State Automobile Association is actually the Auto Club of Northern California, Nevada, and Utah. When I moved to Fernley, I didn't even change auto clubs, just my address.

Comments

[k6rfm.livejournal.com]

A new passport may be more, but we just renewed in September for $110 each. (We got pictures at AAA too, seemed way easier.)

[buddykat.livejournal.com]

Sounds like your coworker needed expedited service of some sort. I can't think of any other reason that it would cost 2x as much as it should.

[k6rfm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I checked travel.state.gov and the additional first-time fee I remembered is only $25. So to get to anywhere near double would require all sort of expedited fees, overnight delivery, etc. It took about 3 weeks to get our new ones, standard processing at the $110 rate, Priority Mail delivery. It took a couple weeks longer for the cancelled old passports to come back. The government shutdown did happen during that time, too.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I think it's possible he's being taken by "helpful" services that file your forms for you and charge you for doing it. I'm deliberately not rushing by filing more than six months before I need the passport.

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

I used to have dreadful anxiety dreams about trying to travel on an expired passport. As a result, I tend to renew them WAY early... ;)

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I admit to having been slightly nervous about making the trip to Canada with just over six months to go on my existing passport. Had it been any other country, I probably would have renewed earlier; however, in this case I decided the best course was to finish the Toronto trip and then start the ball rolling on the renewal for London. I didn't get the slightest hairy eyeball from either Canadian or US Immigration on this last trip, so I guess all's good.

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

I did a naughty thing on my last trip to the UK, in that I exited on the UK passport and re-entered on the US one, just to avoid the non-native lines at my destination airports (because that's just what you want after a ten-hour flight, an hour standing in line...)

The UK customs chap didn't bat an eyelash, but the DHS fella at SFO didn't think highly of it.

Next time, I think I'll deal with the lines... the US doesn't officially recognize dual nationalities and I'm afraid they'll just take my UK passport off me or something if I try it again...

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think you have the right idea. Remember, they have no sense of humor. They might decide to deport you like they did Cheryl, and you'd be utterly screwed. What recourse would you have? It appears that they're a Law Unto Themselves and Their Word May Not Be Questioned.

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

Cheryl? Deported?

(Bear in mind, luv, I'm forever behind whatever is au courant...)

According to the small print on the British consulate page, I could re-apply for and re-acquire my UK passport, if it was taken off me by the US but there's, erm, a bit of irregularity about my birth certificate and I'd rather not go through that, nope...

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yes. Almost four years ago. And as near as she can tell, she can never come here again. She tried appealing it through the TSA process, and their response was, "Yep, that's what we did all right."

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

Ahh, visa stickiness. Visas are, alas, incredibly sticky.

But there's no point in my playing Russian roulette with my passports, nope.

TBH, I'm only hanging on to the UK passport out of a vague, nagging worry that one day the politics of the USA will disgust me to the point of departing. Maybe that day won't come...

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of mentioning that you might be better getting them done in a booth or something. The UK passport office is insanely anal about what they accept as a photo so you're always best off using one of the machines that delivers 4 identically sized and set up pictures.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

Yep, if it is one of the CSAA branches not a problem. We used to be just Northern California, then we got Nevada, and I recently noticed we have Utah now too. Southern California though is another branch of AAA.
But I once stopped at one in Arizona, and even though it was not my home AAA organization, they still recognized me as a member and helped me out. Even though they have Different Names, I think they are more like Service Areas, than completely separate organizations.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Actually, they are more like Worldcons, or the various Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies: they're all legally separate (CSAA is a California non-profit corporation), but they are interlocked in various ways including mutually aiding members from other auto clubs under the shared AAA trademark.

[jbriggs.livejournal.com]

Amusingly, the Automobile Club of Southern California includes New Mexico, Arizona and Hawai'i.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that! Thanks for the info.

Looks like the northern and southern California auto clubs have partially replicated the mostly-relevant portions of the South and Central Westercon rotation zones. Westercon sensibly hived off Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas) into Southern California, however, where it fits better for most travel purposes.

[jbriggs.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. I vaguely recall that was yours and my doing.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and I remember there being resistance to using county boundaries in the Westercon bylaws, even though it seemed IMO the most sensible way to represent the reality on the ground. It wasn't until later that it was pointed out to me why there is a nice straight line along the northern boundaries of San Luis Obispo, Kern, and San Bernardino Counties: It's approximately the Missouri Compromise Line of 36°30' North, presumably put in the original county arrangement to facilitate a simple north-south division of California.