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People who need to renew their passports immediately will not be allowed to book last-minute appointments online, the U.S. State Department announced on Thursday.
Those last-minute appointments, which are meant for people with urgent travel needs, can now be scheduled only by phone, the department said.
The reason for the change? It is meant to solve “the problem of third parties booking all available appointments using bots, and then selling them to applicants with urgent travel needs,” the department said in a statement posted on its website. Some appointments sold by third parties cost as much as $300, USA Today reported.
The department said the change was “temporary” but did not indicate when booking those appointments online may resume.
The appointments can be made by calling the National Passport Information Center, at 1-877-487-2778, from 8 a.M. To 10 p.M. Eastern Standard Time,