Current fingerprinting logjam in DFW

[Greybeard]

I had a gentleman in ANOTHER private class last night. He was having a very difficult time finding ANYWHERE in the Metroplex that he could get an electronic fingerprinting appointment. His phone kept telling him "zero appointments available". It appeared that he may have to drive 80+ miles to Graham TX to get it done. I have no clue if all the DFW locations are completely booked up or if they are still locked down over the Covid panicdemic.

[The Annoyed Man]

I had a gentleman in ANOTHER private class last night. He was having a very difficult time finding ANYWHERE in the Metroplex that he could get an electronic fingerprinting appointment. His phone kept telling him "zero appointments available". It appeared that he may have to drive 80+ miles to Graham TX to get it done. I have no clue if all the DFW locations are completely booked up or if they are still locked down over the Covid panicdemic.

I work for Crossfire, at one of her two fingerprinting locations. That’s what I do all. day. long .... take digital fingerprints. I can tell you the following things from my limited knowledge of the problem (since I’m still relatively new on the job):

1. It’s true that there are VERY few digital fingerprinting locations in the DFW area. I have customers coming from as far away as Rockwall and Tyler, even from Oklahoma, and we're in Saginaw, on the northwest side of Fort Worth.

2. It is true that the number of LTC applications are WAY up (due to all the current nonsense), and therefore LTC-related fingerprinting appointments are way up. Many of my customers have told me that they never even owned a gun before, but that they’ve either just bought one, or are looking for one.

3. Most people never think about it, but LTC isn’t the ONLY reason people need fingerprinting. Registered nurses, insurance salespeople, daycare employees, foster care parents, private investigators, EMS workers, real estate agents, public AND private school employees, massage therapists, and CPAs are ALL required by the state to be fingerprinted, and that’s not even a complete list.

4. State law requires ALL of these different types of applications to be digitally fingerprinted.

5. When I look at a typical day's appointment list, I’d say that roughly between 1/3 and 1/2 of the day's appointments are for LTC applications. I’ve never actually counted the appointments, but they are scheduled for 10 minutes apart, and they take up the whole day from 9am to 5pm, with a 1 hour break from 12-1 for lunch. I frequently work into my lunch break to finish printing someone who arrived at 11:55 for a 1pm appointment. (People are frequently disrespectful of what the term "appointment" means, but I try to accommodate them anyway.)

6. I can ALSO tell you that I typically fingerprint at least 4 or 5 people a day who walk in saying that they can’t wait for their appointment 2 weeks from now. I have no way of knowing whether they have an actual pressing need, or just a pressing want. What I tell them is this: I will happily work you in today IF there is a gap in in the schedule, and there is nobody already standing in line for an existing appointment today. The gaps in the schedule are usually the result of a person either missing their appointment entirely, or they arrived early and I got them in and out before their scheduled appointment time. (Barring complications, it takes me about 5-10 minutes per person to fingerprint, photograph, and charge each person.)

A couple of days ago, I had a customer who needed to be fingerprinted and photographed for three different kinds of licenses....LTC, real estate, and I don’t remember what the 3rd item was. None of her appointments were for that day. I worked her in between other appointments when there was nobody waiting in line, and she was there for probably not more than an hour.

If you don’t have an appointment for that day, I WILL try and work you in, if you’re not an insistent/entitled jerk about it. But I haven’t been doing it for that long (2 weeks now), and the other people at my location are also busy with other customers buying other things. (We're not just a digital fingerprinting service. We have a shipping and packing service. We do passport photos and ink card fingerprinting for federally mandated fingerprinting. We do scanning, printing and copying. We sell gifts. We sell a few guns and some limited ammo, etc., etc. So the other workers might be less inclined or even able to be flexible about working in unscheduled digital fingerprinting customers. It’s a busy business, and I can’t speak for them.)

What I CAN tell you is that this is primarily a problem of current supply and demand—just like with the current guns and ammo situation—and we're doing the best we can. But unlike with the current guns and ammo situation, we are not inflating our prices, which so far as I know, are set by either IdentoGO, or by the various state agencies who require the fingerprinting. From the point of view of the person doing the fingerprinting, there is literally no difference between the service process I render to an LTC applicant, and the one I render to someone renewing their CPA certification. They answer the same questions, get printed the same way, photographed the same way, pay the same way, and the appointments take about the same amount of time.

Here is a hint.... once you make your appointment with IdentoGO in Graham or some other location, you’re now in the IdentoGO system, and you can go a DFW location and ask if you can be worked in as a walk-in. They’ll be able to search the system for your record, pull it up, and process your fingerprinting from there. That doesn’t mean that they WILL. It just means that they CAN. I am happy to help someone who understands that distinction and respects it.

Our location is in Saginaw. We currently have one fingerprinting station in the store, but we have recently acquired some the equipment for a second station in that store, and we are waiting for IdentoGO to provide the rest of it and to finish setting us up to use that equipment. Then we will be able to process roughly twice as many applicants as we have been at that location. I have no personal knowledge of how long that will take, but my guess is that it would be up and running within the next couple of weeks.

I hope this information helps. I would ask only two things:
1. BE RESPECTFUL of the established schedule. I work hard and I go home butt-whooped just trying to get through the day. Every day, we print out the daily list of appointments for OUR location. If you’re not on it, you don’t have an appointment for that day, at our location. Period.
2. Don't be a jerk about insisting on being processed if you don’t have an appointment for that day and time. I will TRY to help you... because I’m a nice guy... but I’m not OBLIGATED to help you beat the system. Be patient, and I’ll help you if I can. But remember, if you’re not in the IdentoGO system at all, I can’t help you at all. So DO make an appointment.

Again, I hope this information is helpful.

[Greybeard]

Thanks Chris for very thorough (as usual) explanation. I texted him (also from Cali) the link to this forum.

[The Annoyed Man]

Thanks Chris for very thorough (as usual) explanation. I texted him (also from Cali) the link to this forum.

[LeonCarr]

Do they still have an Identigo location on Lamar Blvd in Arlington?

Just my .02,
LeonCarr

[STR8-SHOT]

Great current info Chris, thank you! It does pay to be respectful and you are very nice to fit unscheduled people in when possible. Hope some of your hearing has returned in that ear. David

[grim-bob]

FWIW I just had my wife's scheduled and soonest dates around DFW seem to be July 29th. So about 3 weeks out it looks like per scheduling.

[Liberty]

I had to get a TWIC card renewal in June, I called Identigo and had an appointment the next day. I assume the backlog would be the same for fingerprint IDs.. They do take walk-ins Apparently Texas City is faster for making appointnets

[Crossfire]

TAM is correct, but there are a few things contributing to the backlog of fingerprint appointments, other than just the panic to get an LTC.

IdentoGo is requiring the enrollment agents to perform extra cleaning and sanitizing of the equipment between appointments. This is something you REALLY want us to do. There is no such thing as "contact free" fingerprinting, and we don't know where all those fingers have been before they come in contact with the fingerprint scanner, keyboard, etc. As a result, some of the busier locations that would have appointments scheduled every 5 minutes are now taking appointments every 10, or even 15 minutes. That is a difference of taking 12 applicants per hour down to 6, or even 4. Add increased demand to that, and it creates a snowball effect.

We have maintained our rate of one applicant every 10 minutes at Saginaw, and every 5 at Fort Worth because, honestly, we have been doing this a long time, and have experienced agents who are very efficient at their jobs. (Except for TAM, but, hey, he is getting there!) Starting next week, we will also deploy another fingerprint station at the Saginaw location, so we will be able to increase to every 5 minutes. HOWEVER, we are just 2 locations in the vast scheme of things. Not sure how much of a dent this will make in the backlog.

So, be patient folks. And remember, if you are going to walk in with a sob story about why you need to be printed RIGHT NOW, and cannot possibly wait 3 weeks for your appointment, it better be a good story. Really good.

[Jusme]

Anyone hiring extra hands part time? Right now my schedule is after 11 am my weekends are free. If I can help speed up the process, I’m on board. The closest ident-igo place to me is in Burleson. Just sayin....

[The Annoyed Man]

I would add a couple of other things for employers and for LTC instructors that have become major gripes for me.....STOP telling your people these 2 things:

1. STOP telling them that they don’t need to set up an appointment in the IdentoGO system before we will see them as a "walk-in". They absolutely MUST set up an appointment in the IdentoGO system, or there will not be a searchable record we can find for them in order to pull them up in our system and fingerprint them. WE LITERALLY CAN'T DO THAT FOR THEM.
2. STOP telling them to be sure to ask us for a printed or emailed copy of their fingerprints to take with them, in addition to the digital copies we send directly to Austin, "because they sometimes screw up the prints", or "because they sometimes get lost in transmission". That’s just not so. And we don’t even have the ability to provide printed or emailed copies right now. The software quite literally does not allow for it. Hopefully, we may get the ability to print copies from a digital scan in the future, but if so, it will be offered as a separate service, with its own fee structure, and not as a free "addendum" to the digital fingerprinting service required by the state.
   
   They don’t get lost. And we don’t "screw them up". It’s just a sad fact that some people don’t have very good fingerprints.....the elderly, nurses who wash their hands all the time, bricklayers and other people who have worked hard with their hands all their lives, etc., all wear their prints down over time, and they just aren’t well defined any longer. In some cases, it can be due to ethnicity or a medical condition. IN SOME CASES, the state will reject the originally submitted prints as unreadable, and notify the person in question that they need to return for another fingerprinting attempt. When they return, it is free. When we submit the new prints to the state, the state HAS to accept them as the "best available". The state cannot deny you your RKBA or your right to work in your chosen field, just because you don’t have easily read fingerprints any more. Of the roughly 40-45 people per day that I’ve fingerprinted daily for the past 4 weeks, exactly ONE person so far has had to come back for reprinting.

Those are the two gripes I have, and they seem to be happening more frequently. We don’t HAVE to disrupt our schedule to accommodate people who can’t be bothered to wait for their assigned appointments. As Crossfire explained above, we're already full up. We try to help if we can, but it’s not a mandate; and we simply can’t help someone who thinks he doesn’t even need to set up an appointment before trying to jump to the head of the line. The software doesn’t give us that option. So don’t "help" them to think that.

[The Annoyed Man]

I had to get a TWIC card renewal in June, I called Identigo and had an appointment the next day. I assume the backlog would be the same for fingerprint IDs.. They do take walk-ins Apparently Texas City is faster for making appointnets

Depends on where you are. Some municipal areas are busier than others. DFW is slammed. We do take walk-ins, but they'll have to sit and wait for a gap in the schedule to open up. Priority goes to the people who show up for their appointments. If there’s a no-show, or if we can bang them out quickly enough to create some breathing room, we'll work in a walk-in customer.......just like your doctor or dentist would do.

[Liberty]

I had to get a TWIC card renewal in June, I called Identigo and had an appointment the next day. I assume the backlog would be the same for fingerprint IDs.. They do take walk-ins Apparently Texas City is faster for making appointnets

Depends on where you are. Some municipal areas are busier than others. DFW is slammed. We do take walk-ins, but they'll have to sit and wait for a gap in the schedule to open up. Priority goes to the people who show up for their appointments. If there’s a no-show, or if we can bang them out quickly enough to create some breathing room, we'll work in a walk-in customer.......just like your doctor or dentist would do.

Texas City is a big industrial port area, They will be geared mostly for the TWIC system, and the LTC work is a smaller percentage of their workload. There would be tremendous pressure for them to remain open. But those in a hurry to get their prints might consider coming to beautiful downtown Texas City. I suspect that locations in Baytown or Freeport would be having similar workloads.

[AdioSS]

TAM, I thought I was about to get a chance to meet you. I’m getting back into Private security stuff again and was in the process of getting my licenses back after being in corrections for several years. My company was trying to input me into the Identogo stuff so I could schedule my fingerprinting, but kept having issues. Then they finally realized that my prints are actually still in the system. They said it was from 2016. I got out of private security in 2012 and was in corrections during that time. I’m guessing it may have been from when I got my LTC renewed in 2015 maybe?