Travel Document Systems

Perfectly pleased with my experience here! I dropped off my application and paperwork on Friday ¹¹⁄₂₀ and was able to pick up my passport on Wednesday 11/​25, all with their basic $ 89 expedited service. Would recommend to any of my friends.

I don’t travel very often, so I’m not all that familiar with the visa obtaining process. In fact, I did not even know I needed a visa to go to Brazil. I scheduled my trip and realized I had about a month to get my visa! The Brazilian Embassy in SF has an online schedule to book visa appointments and it was not working at all and it looked like no appointments were available until a week and a half before my trip! I decided to go to TDS to see if they could secure an appointment for me since the embassy was not taking any phone calls from me.
I was nervous because once the appointment was booked, I would have just one week to get the processing done before I was scheduled to leave! TDS did not guarantee anything but they did say it takes about a week. Having little other options and failing to accomplish anything by showing up at the embassy, I bit my lip and took a chance.
To just gain that little extra control of the situation, I decided to drop my docs off in person rather than mail. Seeing the office, it seemed a little disorganized and the clerks didn’t seem to understand that I had already booked my appointment. The lady immediately was like, you’re not going to get your visa which really freaked me out. But once she understood that the appointment was booked and I was only dropping off my docs, she assured me it would get done.
All in all, it worked out and i was happy enough with the service. Seeing that they were a little disorganized, i don’t know how they would handle more complicated situations that would require multiple visas on a deadline. I do have to say though that they were my best bet in dealing with the Brazilian Embassy so maybe it depends also what country you’re going to!

1. My niece was traveling within the next two weeks. Her passport had expired.
2. The US passport service was totally non responsive. In spite of their advertisement we could not get an appointment even within the next three weeks on line and they do not answer the phone.
3. TDS San Francisco answered the phone immediately. They provided simple to follow instructions; and we walked in and dropped off the application. We were immediately seen and taken care of at reception and had zero wait!
4. The new passport was ready for pickup four days ahead of the day they had promised. Who could ask for more.

absolutely AH-​mazing! Rebecca goes above and beyond to help me get my travelers around the world.

This company is AMAZING!!!
My company uses TDS frequently and once again Travel Document Systems pulled through for me again at the last minute ! We needed multiple Visas to China and Russia and there was not one hiccup!,
We had three travelers who made mistakes on their applications and we were notified immediately by the pro active staff at TDS!!!
Customer service was A plus!
All travelers received their Visas with in days and all trips were made!
To top it off TDS prices were outstanding!
Any organization not using Travel Documents Systems currently, you are missing the boat!
I highly recommend you do so!
BRAVO TDS!!!

Thank you so much TDS! They were so unbelievably helpful! My friend and I have never gotten visas before and we had no clue how to go about it! These guys made even our difficult situation seem easy! They were so free to communicate with and they always got back to us! It was really nice to actually be working with a really person who showed interest in our trip and did a great job taking care of us and getting us to where we needed to go! If you need a place to go for your travel documents, TDS is definitely the way to go!!!

I have to renew my Chinese visa every year. Every year! Travel Document Systems is pretty much the easiest and most painless way of getting it.
You do everything they ask on their website:
1. Fill out the visa application
2. FedEx back a passport photo, passport, application and endorsements
3. Fill out the online order form and pay
And they review your application and ask you for additional information before submitting it to the consulate. Several days later you have your passport back with the necessary visa.
Without TDS I’m not sure how much energy I would expend doing this on my own.

I travel extensively (about five international trips a year to Africa and Asia), and have never had a problem using Pinnacle Travel Document Systems in Washington DC. They have an outside rep who answers my emails the same day, sometimes even on weekends! They are efficient, professional, and fast. Some of the African visas take time; when I am traveling to four or five African countries in one trip, it’s worth the service fee to have Pinnacle coordinate all my visas and get them back to me on time.

I travel abroad a fair amount and have to deal with VISAs, etc, regularly. I recently used TDS in SF to process a VISA to Ghana. I forgot that I had another trip that would require my passport coming up and stupidly used standard instead of rush. I would’ve missed my 2^nd trip on that time table but Maria from the SF TDS office coordinated with their DC office to change the process to Rush. This is not as easy as it sounds — Maria spent literally hours working on this for me. I’ll never use another service besides TDS after this — hands down the best in the business.

I was supposed to get three visas for work trips to Africa, India and China, and my company uses TDS. I had some questions and concerns, though, so I emailed TDS with my predicament as they wanted to hold onto my passport for three months and I needed it for a trip to Canada during that window. They never responded. I tried calling multiple times, but only ever got a recording, never an actual person. So I emailed them again. Still no response.
Finally, eight days after my last email, I called them and spoke to the rudest employee ever. She told me to email them. I told her I did.
Her: «Well, how long ago?»
Me: «A little over a week ago.»
Her: *snorts” «We get a lot of emails. You can’t expect us to hold onto something from a week ago.»
WHAT?!? Then she snottily told me to email them again, but by this point, I was done. Customer service at its finest. My sister had used their D.C. office the year prior and had unfavorable things to say about TDS.
So instead of paying upward of $ 700, including all the fees, I walked into the Chinese embassy in San Francisco and got my passport back within four days. Then, I walked my passport into Travisa Outsourcing in SoMa, which handles all India visas, and got it back THAT AFTERNOON, no expediting fees or anything. The last one, Ghana, was a bit more difficult – I had to send it off to the embassy in D.C., but it was still back in my possession within a week.
My total time spent: two weeks. TDS required I give them my passport a minimum of two months in advance; anything closer to my travel date and there were additional, exorbitant expediting fees.
My total cost: $ 376. TDS wanted double that.
My recommendation to all travelers is to just get the visas yourself. If you’re renewing your passport, send it into the state department on your own.
My company is using TDS again for reason’s unbeknown to me, and currently there’s a Facebook thread circulating among my colleagues with more than 25 comments of people who have had similar experiences to mine, so this is clearly not a one-​time occurrence.

I just got my expedited renewal passport 7 days before I thought I would! You guys rock! Now I can rest assured that my trip abroad will not be ruined by my forgetfulness. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
All I had to do was go to their website, look at the checklist, fill out 2 short forms in addition to the US Passport form, get a passport photo and wait for five short minutes at the office for someone to be free to look over my paperwork. Seven short calendar days later (twice as fast as I paid for) I have my new passport in my hands. Seriously the most painless process involving a government document I have ever gone through (and bear in mind I did at one point work for a government agency).

There is nothing more frustrating than a company who does not value there customers needs.
It can be very stressful applying for VISA’s for different countries when traveling, the biggest and most stressful factor is relying on other people to do their job… this DID NOT happen with the following company, they DID NOT do their job! I have copied and pasted the following review which I feel sums up one of the worst companies in the US…
…needless to say… THEY DROPPED THE BALL
I have left the review in full ENJOY, and STAY CLEAR of them. The reason I feel the need to post this is because after I read the following review, the company had the ability to delete it from the Unilocal reviews. OUTRAGEOUS. please AVOID if possible
(Left by another Unilocal member)
I have just experienced some of the worst customer service in my life with TDS!
I phoned TDS a few months back to ask how long it would take, on average, to process an Indian tourist visa. Because I have a non-​US passport, I was prepared for it to take a bit longer than a US-​passport holder. TDS assured me that the average processing time for a non-​US passport holder would be 7 – 10 days. Great, I thought! I had 1 month to go until my scheduled trip to India, so plenty of time. I filled out my paperwork and couriered my documents to TDS.
The next week, I received a call from Tamera — the staff member assigned Indian visa processing. Apparently, the embassy wanted some additional paperwork from me which I faxed over to Tamera immediately. I figured i would hear back in a week about the status of my visa. After 10 days, I heard nothing from TDS so I decided to give them a quick follow-​up call. Tamera didn’t know how long it would take but would ask the courier to check with the embassy the next day. Her response to me was flippant and borderline rude. I called the next day… TDS still didn’t know the status of my visa. It’s now been about 2 weeks since I sent the documents away and I’m starting to get nervous. I made a point of calling TDS EVERY day to follow up – left voicemail messages that were not returned, or when I did speak with someone I received a vague response and no clear idea of what was going on.
I understand that visas can take a while to process. That’s why I sent my paperwork in early! However, the LEAST TDS could do would be to give their customers a courtesy call letting them know the status. I shouldn’t have to call up every day — stressed out about being left in the dark. Getting a visa is a stressful process and it would have been nice to just get some reassurance that everything would work out eventually. With the service I got, I was constantly worried that my case was not important or being taken care of.
3 days before I’m due to fly to India… I STILL HAVEN’T RECEIVED MY VISA. And, every time I call, no one gives me a straight answer. The front desk person told me she would look into it and call me back… but at the end of the day I still hadn’t heard anything. My stress and frustration levels are at an all time high! At least let me know that it’s been denied so I can cancel my flights.
Finally, 2 days before my flight, I was told that I would receive my visa via priority overnight Saturday delivery on the day before I was due to fly.
To make a long story short, everything did work out in the end. However, the staff at TDS don’t seem to care about their customers. I was constantly left guessing and frustrated. To make things worse, I was DOUBLE-​BILLED and although they eventually refunded me, I’m still following up on paperwork I am yet to receive.
I travel a lot for work/​pleasure and I will most definitely be looking into an alternative travel document processing company in the future. So will my colleagues!

If you are looking to get a VISA to enter a country, save your time and money and do it yourself. Their VP, Dean Orbell, actually said to me «That’s right, we’re not visa experts, we just deliver the documents». That’s all they do is take your forms and hand them to the consulate. There is ZERO value in their offerings. This was right before he called me a ‘moron’, despite admitting that his company was totally at fault for a catastrophic screwup. Great customer service — really, people-​people.
The long and short of it was that I walked into their SF office with a problem. I needed to get my girlfriend a visa to Thailand, but she is an asylee holding a refugee travel document (like a passport). My first and continual question was «could she get a visa since the document expires within 6 months of our travel dates, which is the policy of passport visas — would it still apply to the RTD which is only a year-​long document). The woman at the office, Tamera, seemed pissed at something, had no idea, but took the documents and said she would contact the embassy and let me know.
I never heard a word from her and left messages a few times over the weeks they held on to the documents. No call-​backs, no response. In fact, every time I called, I spoke to someone else who couldn’t access the file for updates, tell me the location of the documents and was rude themselves. It seems to be endemic to their offices for them to hire rude people.
Finally, a few weeks later we were notified by someone named «Mr. Britt» (who signs his emails with «Thank the Goddess!» — very professional) that they were unable to obtain the visa and we would be charged regardless. No explanation, no help. I called to speak with someone and I was simply told, this is the policy of the embassy and we cannot dig further or else we will «risk of being banned from doing business with them.».
I simply wanted to see how this organization could help us to find someone at the Thai embassy to consider our situation. I assumed I hired them for their expertise and connections. I finally was connected to Dean Orbell who I was told was a co-​founder. After explaining the situation to him and expecting someone at the top to appreciate my delimma, imagine my surprise when he went on the defensive — first, suggesting that I must have convinced Tamera to do something she shouldn’t have. Then he told me about the true nature of their services (they have NO EXPERTISE AND NO CONNECTIONS see above) and then making repeated insults at me for my suggesting that I was misled in some way (and yes, I totally kept my cool).
Bottom line is that I cannot imagine any one sustaining a business for so long with such a poor attitude. Try to help people. If you can’t, be honest and nice, but lose the attitude and insults. Clearly, judging by the other posts here, I’m not the only one who sees this…

I have just experienced some of the worst customer service in my life with TDS!
I phoned TDS a few months back to ask how long it would take, on average, to process an Indian tourist visa. Because I have a non-​US passport, I was prepared for it to take a bit longer than a US-​passport holder. TDS assured me that the average processing time for a non-​US passport holder would be 7 – 10 days. Great, I thought! I had 1 month to go until my scheduled trip to India, so plenty of time. I filled out my paperwork and couriered my documents to TDS.
The next week, I received a call from Tamera — the staff member assigned Indian visa processing. Apparently, the embassy wanted some additional paperwork from me which I faxed over to Tamera immediately. I figured i would hear back in a week about the status of my visa. After 10 days, I heard nothing from TDS so I decided to give them a quick follow-​up call. Tamera didn’t know how long it would take but would ask the courier to check with the embassy the next day. Her response to me was flippant and borderline rude. I called the next day… TDS still didn’t know the status of my visa. It’s now been about 2 weeks since I sent the documents away and I’m starting to get nervous. I made a point of calling TDS EVERY day to follow up – left voicemail messages that were not returned, or when I did speak with someone I received a vague response and no clear idea of what was going on.
I understand that visas can take a while to process. That’s why I sent my paperwork in early! However, the LEAST TDS could do would be to give their customers a courtesy call letting them know the status. I shouldn’t have to call up every day — stressed out about being left in the dark. Getting a visa is a stressful process and it would have been nice to just get some reassurance that everything would work out eventually. With the service I got, I was constantly worried that my case was not important or being taken care of.
3 days before I’m due to fly to India… I STILL HAVEN’T RECEIVED MY VISA. And, every time I call, no one gives me a straight answer. The front desk person told me she would look into it and call me back… but at the end of the day I still hadn’t heard anything. My stress and frustration levels are at an all time high! At least let me know that it’s been denied so I can cancel my flights.
Finally, 2 days before my flight, I was told that I would receive my visa via priority overnight Saturday delivery on the day before I was due to fly.
To make a long story short, everything did work out in the end. However, the staff at TDS don’t seem to care about their customers. I was constantly left guessing and frustrated. To make things worse, I was DOUBLE-​BILLED and although they eventually refunded me, I’m still following up on paperwork I am yet to receive.
I travel a lot for work/​pleasure and I will most definitely be looking into an alternative travel document processing company in the future. So will my colleagues!

Watch out for the wrong information they have given in the website.
I am an Indian Citizen working in a tech company, and I needed Visa for Romania for business. I looked on the website and it was saying to send the documents and get it done. When I sent my document to their SF office (after talking on phone with TDS), they called me back after receiving the documents, saying they can not process it and I need to go in person to LA.
If that was the case, why there was wrong information on website, and then on phone? It wasted my time and then I was charged $ 23, to ship my passport back… completely waste of time and money. just because information was not passed nicely!

Wow, I am honestly surprised by the reviews of this place. After several emails and phone calls with the SF and NY office I decided to use a different company. The customer service was terrible from both offices, bad enough for me to go with a different company at the last minute.

Needed to get passport pages sewn in, and they were very helpful. The price was a lot cheaper than nearby places i surveyed.
Tip: Call first to see what you need to bring in before hoping into your car and driving there, realizing you need more documentations!

I had 3 business days to renew my passport before my trip to Vancouver. TDS was a lifesaver, even though the charges really were quite exorbitant ($ 330 for 3 business days, wow, talk about a dent in my savings). But, they were timely– let me print out my supporting documents for free at their office– handled my pesky daily phone calls checking on passport status– and remained open until 5:30pm for my boyfriend to pick up my renewed, expedited passport.
Service was friendly and quick; clear; and the most difficult thing was finding the darn place (who knew «lobby» of the embaracadero center meant «2^nd floor»??). The office is clean and professional and perfectly hidden around the corner, next to the Green café.
Thanks to TDS, I will be able to go on my trip, and won’t become a Canadian citizen bc I’ll be stuck in Vancouver BC. Thank you!

Went in today at lunch time expecting a long line, no other customers were there. I was in and out in no time flat. The woman at the front desk (I didn’t get her name) made it very easy to apply and was very nice.
Now all I need to do is wait for my passport to be delivered to me next week… (and they validate parking for the garage in the building — wish I could give an extra star for that!)

The plethora of 5-​star reviews aren’t wrong, folks… this place is on top of it!
Like the true procrastinator that I am, instead of taking care of my passport months ago when I had all the time in the world to prepare for my trip to the Great White North for the Winter Olympics, I decided to wait until it was too late to expedite my passport through the proper Government channels. Lucky for me, TDS enables perennial laggers like myself, so it’s all good.
For $ 75, they’ll make sure you get your passport faster than a crackhead on an elliptical trainer. It’s as easy as walking in, jumping on one of their computers in the office, walking the paperwork to the post office… then, blizzow! — you’ve got yourself a ticket to a foreign land.
Nice folks, and they’ll even knock off $ 10 if you mention Unilocal (though I didn’t see that notice until right now. Boo!).