"I have received your email regarding our policy of not allowing pick-up of passports and citizenship documents at the Consulate. We have this policy for several reasons. First, when we did allow pick-ups several years ago an astonishingly large number of Americans never returned to pick up their passports or reports of birth abroad. Some individuals would respond to repeated requests to return to pick up their documents but we do not have the staff to track who had returned for pick up and to subsequently make repeated attempts to contact the individual. Others, in spite of our efforts, never returned and we were left with valid passports and other valuable documents, which presents a security risk.
In addition, admission to the Consulate is by appointment only for security reasons. Therefore, in order to pick up a document, an American would need to book an appointment on-line prior to coming as we cannot leave passports with front desk staff. This presents problems for several reasons. First, it is difficult to know the exact date on which a passport will be ready for pick up as there any many automated checks that need to be completed prior to terminating processing, therefore booking an appointment for pick-up would be problematic for the customer. Second, if many people were booking appointments to pick-up citizenship documents, our available slots for those with initial applications could become congested.
I hope that I have answered your inquiry regarding unavailability of a pick-up option to your satisfaction. I am sorry about the other inconveniences that you experienced while adding pages to your passport. However decisions such as the price of various services e.g. extra pages are set worldwide by the Department of State in Washington DC and we have no discretion to alter these prices based on local circumstances. Our exchange rate is set monthly by a central authority and due to systems issues can only be changed by this central authority once per month. I will follow up with our cashier to see if he can obtain adequate small bills to be able to make change for those desiring to pay with dollars.
Sincerely,
Claudia Baker
Consular Section Chief
Cape Town, South Africa

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