Global Entry is a program of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service that allows pre-approved, low-risk travelers to receive expedited clearance upon arrival into the United States through kiosks at select airports and via the SENTRI and NEXUS lanes by land and sea. (thanks, Wikipedia)
Anyone who has Global Entry will tell you it’s a great time saver. It costs $100 and is good for 5 years. What’s more, if you have Global Entry, you also get TSA PreCheck. Membership in that Trusted Traveler Program alone costs $78 and allows you to go through the faster queue of TSA checkpoints since you don’t have to take off your shoes, light jacket or belt, remove your computer or bag o’ liquids, from your bag, etc.
Applying for Global Entry in recent years has become something of a long, drawn-out task. The Dep’t of Homeland Security (DHS) warns new applications will take upwards of 4-6 months for processing. They claim it’s due to “a high volume of applications.”
However, renewing your Global Entry is another story. Renewals can be done online, and when I renewed in December, we were surprised at the length of time it took from application to approval.
Apparently though, there’s recently been a change in the timing of renewals. And unfortunately, it’s not reflected anywhere on DHS’s website.
According to DHS’s FAQ (last modified December 30, 2022), “You become eligible to renew your [Global Entry] membership one year prior to program expiration.” Your GE expires on your birthday, so for years, that’s meant you could renew on your birthday, 1 year prior to your GE expiring.
Not anymore.
One of our readers, Sandy S., is the person in her house who takes care of points, miles, travel plans, etc. She was trying to renew her husband’s GE on his birthday the other day and got a very unpleasant surprise. I’ll let her explain what happened:
Global Entry Renewal eligibility warning. It is no longer one year before the expiration but a day less than a year.
Today is P2’s Birthday, March 7. Me being on task (obsessed), we submitted P2’s Global Entry Renewal, exactly one year before the expiration date. Within 15 minutes P2 got a notification about application status change. To our surprise, the application was denied due to application submission being too early. Simple search through Homeland Security website, it specifically states eligibility to renew is one year before the expiration date, but careful examination of P2’s account, renewal eligibility is on March 8, not on P2’s birthday.
This must be new because I renewed on my birthday in January and didn’t have this problem. In addition, I believe Homeland Security change the rule recently for Renewal to be one day less than a year, but didn’t care to edit the rule on their website and didn’t bother to reprogram their web interface so the renewal button doesn’t show until the proper renew eligibility date. This is my hunch because the Renewal Membership button is a working button in P2’s account while I don’t have the Renew Membership in my account because I’m not eligible to renew until Jan 2029. And we’re completely bummed out that we just lost $100 in 15 minutes. The denial letter stated that we have to pay another fee if we decide to submit another renewal application at a later date.
Typically, the government won’t even let you submit your application unless you’re within the time frame to renew (I just checked my GE, which doesn’t expire until March 2028, and I don’t have the “Renew Membership” button). But for Sandy’s husband, the DHS website let him renew on March 7th, and THEN said it was too early. AND to add insult to injury, they kept the $100, because, “The fee is non-refundable, even if an application is denied.“
Who knows why this might have happened…perhaps because 2024 is a leap day year? A simple IT oversight when tweaking the website? Who knows.
Sandy says she sent the government a message about the working Renew Membership button being available and that previously they were able to apply one year (read: on their respective birthdays) before their respective expiration dates.
Hopefully, DHS will be able to clear whatever red tape there is to get Sandy and her husband their $100 back. And hopefully they’ll also either clarify that you can’t start the renewal process until the day AFTER your birthday (which, technically, is 1 year minus a day), or they’ll fix their website to reflect how it worked before, when you begin the renewal process on your birthday.
Until then, if you’re the hypervigilant, “obsessed” personality type who typically would renew Global Entry on your birthday, a year before it expired, it would probably behoove you to wait a day. Otherwise, you might be out $100, like Sandy and her husband (so far) are.
*** MANY thanks to Sandy S., for allowing us to share her story and screen capture.
Feature Photo: www.cbp.gov
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