Quote:
Originally Posted by Stu from NYC
No idea that AAA offered free photos.
Local companies around here are ripoffs for the pictures.
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I got a free passport photo from AAA last fall (might as well after paying $80 a year for many years without needing anything else). A month later, my passport request was denied because it seems my head was not exactly facing the camera, but was at a very slight angle, like 2 degrees. AAA took another photo for me and did it right, but still, that doubled my driving time to two hours. Just a warning to look carefully at the photo. I guess the Passport Agency is being much more picky these days, perhaps because they digitize the photo for facial recognition. All told, it took me over two months to get my new passport. I didn’t pay for expedited service.
By the way, if you ever need to send your passport somewhere for a visa stamp, be careful. In 1983 my ex-wife and I were on our way to Beijing to work for a year. Our travel agent recommended that we get a Japanese visa, as we would be spending a night there. We sent the Japanese consulate in Los Angeles our passports a month before we were scheduled to leave. They lost our passports, and getting new ones and Chinese visas hours before our flight was very difficult and stressful. Our passports and visas finally were returned to us over a year later from the Japanese consulate, without apology or even a free coupon for a local sushi restaurant.