Mailing to Costa Rica

Hello Sharpie2.

Welcome to Expat.com!

Aurélie

Well, it all depends on what you are trying to ship down here. If you're shipping a whole household then a container is really the only way to go. There are also partial load services (see my blog post here: How To Have Christmas in May about two companies that do that. The drawback is that you'll probably wait 2-3 months to get your stuff.

All mail will not be opened, in fact probably none of it will be opened without you present, but that is not the problem.

CR Customs is now being much more stringent about stopping packages that appear to be merchandise. It used to be that pretty much anything under 2 Kg. could get through but no more. Anything that looks like it is from a business will get stopped. Once stopped the recipient will receive a notice that the package is being held in the Zapote P.O. You must physically go there and endure about a 2-hour wait and will pay duty and other fees to get your package liberated. They will not forward anything to your local P.O.

If you must mail things I recommend you or a friend re-package the item, hand write the addresses, and even crunch the box a little and put on some duct tape (no kidding!). Even then it might get stopped if it's big and heavy.

Otherwise, use DHL, UPS, or FedEx and expect to pay double the shipping rate of the USPS and pay duties, but at least you can probably get it forwarded to your town if they have an office there and can do the transaction over the phone.

Pura vida,

Casey  -  A Dull Roar - Moving to, Retiring in, and Living with Costa Rica

Sharpie2 wrote:

I understand that bring a shipping container is prohibitive cost wise.

It seems that starting from scratch wouldn't be so cheap either.  I'd appreciate some comments and hearing about people's experiences about that.

Is is then possible to mail some things to yourself or someone else in Costa Rica or will all mail be opened?

When I checked UPS and Fed-Ex to ship a 30 lb box to the Guanacaste area several months ago, it would have been cheaper for me to fly there and deliver it myself - literally! ($700 +/-)

There are shipping services in Miami that charge by the cubic foot that are more reasonable (e.g., ShippingCR.com, $25/cu ft). I haven't used them yet but plan to in the coming year.

From what I have seen, shipping anything to CR is a bit expensive - only ship what you really need!

I review two of those 3rd party re-shippers, including ShippingCR on my blog (see below). I've used the latter, but there were problems that look like they are going to be unresolved (undelivered items and now no answers to e-mail or phone). Just FYI.

Casey  -  A Dull Roar - Moving to, Retiring in, and Living with Costa Rica

Hello ,

As far I know , there is no mail box in each house so how the courrier is distributed , for example somebody from Canada sends a letter to a friend in Costa Rica ?

I believe that most peolple have postal boxes at a post office or somewhere like Mail Boxes Etc.  So you must go pick up your mail.