Documentation Renewal Issue - Any Thoughts?

I did the online renewal through the official government site back in early November for a 12.31 expiration (well before the shutdown), paid through pay.gov, card charged, receipt received. New certificate never came and my vessel is showing up in the database as expired. Also not seeing anything pertaining to my doc number in their work packet search page and their case processing report shows them to be well beyond November for renewals. My understanding from this forum and elsewhere is that renewals processed online, particularly before the shutdown, have been showing up without issue and often expediently.

Over the past few weeks I have emailed and repeatedly called the appropriate number at the USCG Documentation Center, waited on hold with no one picking up for hours, left messages and continue to hear nothing back. There's no reason for me to believe I'll actually ever get a human on the phone or a return email but I will continue to try again next week. The immediate response from pay.gov was that there was nothing they could do and that I should reach out to USCG Doc Center.

Before I suck it up and throw more money at it including a late renewal fee, hoping for the best, has anyone been in a similar situation and had any luck with resolution?

Thanks!

Remember the State Departmens backlog about nine years ago when all of a sudden you needed a passport (not just a driver's license) to cross the Mexico and Canadian border. Many passport applications backed up and a 5-6 month backlog developed.

Stacks of new and renewal passport applications were just thrown away to clear out the backlog. I had to stand in line for hours to get a passport renewal and could only do it within 1-2 days of my overseas trip. The clerk supposedly checked to see if my 5 mo old application was in the queue but I bet none were ever found. Fortunately my original check was never cashed.

The same may have happened with USCG documentation. Unfortunately once your credit card is charged you will have a hard time getting it back even if you start over. Maybe send in a new renewal form with a copy of the receipt.

And I wouldn't worry too much about getting fined or anything. Just keep your receipt with your old document. Don't know what happens if you need to sell your boat. There is a process for a new owner to recover an expired document so maybe that is what he would have to do.

David

I did mine online in January and got the new doc in about 7 days so something is messed up with yours. Did it actually charge your card? Normally you can get to a person pretty quickly but since we had the shutdown they are probably backed up. I would keep trying periodically to get to a person on the phone. If you can send them a copy of your credit card bill they should drop the late fee and get it processed. Good luck.

Just renewed mine, did an online payment about two weeks ago, got the certificate ridiculously fast, appeared in my mailbox like four days later. On the other hand I sent a written request to correct the tonnage which is off by double about a year and a half ago, still not corrected but maybe not important anyway.

My only renewal issue is that when renewing early, my period of coverage was reduced. Last time, it cost me two months.

Cruzer said:

Over the past few weeks I have emailed and repeatedly called the appropriate number at the USCG Documentation Center, waited on hold with no one picking up for hours, left messages and continue to hear nothing back. There's no reason for me to believe I'll actually ever get a human on the phone or a return email but I will continue to try again next week. The immediate response from pay.gov was that there was nothing they could do and that I should reach out to USCG Doc Center.

Click to expand...

Keep calling. Might still be shut-down related, additional backlog, etc... but in any case I've found the NVDC folks to be very responsive. Once you get a human, should work out OK...

-Chris

Luckily ours, received about a week ago, took less than 2 weeks. The Customs sticker is another story, done online December 12, still waiting!

We got our renewal done in just a few days in early January. Did the customs sticker at the same time and still no sticker. Also did a Nexus application and I got a preliminary approval in about 10 days but my wive, who sent her's in within a hour of mine, still has not got her's approved.

Thanks for the replies. I'm guessing it was a glitch more than anything else and for some reason it just didn't go through despite being charged. Not being able to get ahold of anyone is a different story but I'll keep at it for a bit longer before trying again. In the grand scheme of things I'm not concerned about my doc being expired when I've taken the proper steps and have a paper trail. It will eventually get resolved one way or another - just annoying more than anything when I like to have everything buttoned up.

I received mine in about a week.