I got my passport 17 days after submitting the online request for renewal—so about two and a half weeks. That's less than half the time I was asked to budget.

The new digital renewal process is surprisingly smooth and fast.

After this article was first published, reader Dennis Markham reported, "For both my travel partner and I, we were only successful scanning the chip from the color photo page inside the passport.

I travel frequently, as do my wife and family. I always recommend Booking.com, and we all use it almost exclusively. Christopher Elliott, the Travel Troubleshooter .