September 6 , 2007 Issue

The Internet is a wonderful tool for a lot of things, but a lot of smarmy people have figured out lots and lots of ways to separate the unwary from their money. A case in point: Recently I found myself in need of a passport. In lo these many years I have never acquired one. I’ve been to Mexico, the Grand Bahamas, and Jamaica, but in the good old days pre-terrorism, all I needed was a birth certificate to travel across those borders. Now one is required to have a regulation U.S. passport to travel to those exotic locales.

A friend told me he thought I ought to be able to accomplish all this quite quickly via the Internet. As most are aware, these new regulations have put quite a strain on the State Department and there is some backlog in acquiring a passport quickly. Big cities have long lines of people waiting to present their papers.

So I typed in U.S. Passport and a multitude of sites popped up. One that popped up said it was the official Department of Justice site for the United States and wanted to charge $5.95 for the application. That seemed odd to me, sort of like the IRS charging for tax forms. It took a while for the light bulb to go off in my head and realize the Justice Department does not issue passports, but I bet they “sell” a lot of passport applications, thereby acquiring quite a few credit card numbers.

Other places offered passport service in just a week for $65, plus another $130 for the passport. You had to provide the photos from another source, but that all seemed rather expensive to me. Several sites noted that often the post office is an official application site, so I called the Fort Walton Beach post office where a very nice woman informed me that passport applications were available at the Fort Walton Beach library.

So I visited the FWB library for the first time. Whoever designed this building had to be drunk. I knew where it was, but not how to get into it, thus I circled it. I thought I could get in from U.S. Hwy 98, but no, I had to go around it to get into it. When I got there, I saw the parking lot but no door to get in. I parked and started walking past several people who looked as if they might be living on the outside benches, which were under cover from the blazing sun. The doors are located in the middle of a long promenade. I entered through metal detectors, which I found quite odd, but which then explained the odd placement of the door. No book thief could make a quick escape to the parking lot and maybe the residents of the benches would do their civic duty and trip him.

However, the circuitous trip was worth it. A very pleasant and informative woman at the library directed me to the forms and answered my questions. She said it took about 12 weeks to get a passport, more than enough time for my particular travel needs. She also said the library was an official point for returning the forms as was the courthouse. An appointment is needed at the library, so she wrote down the phone number. She said she didn’t know if an appointment was needed at the courthouse, but she wrote that number down too. This is one great civil servant. She told me I would need two checks, one for $67 and one for $30 and I could go to Snappy Photo for the photos. She didn’t have to go to all that trouble, but she was clearly a pro and a pleasure to deal with.

So, with the photos costing less than $10, the passport will cost a bit over $100, saving me about $100 because I did not believe everything I read on the Internet. Like I said, a number of people have figured out a number of clever ways to separate the unwary from their money.

More from Leah Stratmann