Sending stuff to Chile
 

Couple of days ago my Coleman Sportster II Dual Fuel (533 series) decided to die. The pump will not compress not even once. I was told by Coleman´s UK support (http://www.coleman.eu/UK/t-spareparts.aspx) that it´s the one way check valve that needs changing.

I asked them to send me one out here (Chile, currently in San Pedro de Atacama) but subsequently talked to people who warned me that postal delivery in South America is hit and miss, with stuff sometimes taking a full month to appear... If that happens, we´ll have wasted 20% of our trip time waiting for a tiny valve.

Does anyone have any experience/advice on what the most reliable way to send stuff out here would be?

This is a part that costs $4 in the US, $18 in the UK, but if I have to pay double that to get it and be able to carry on with the trip, I would gladly do so. Would something like DHL delivery to a larger town and pickup from their depot be the best solution?

Cheers

Alex

Hi Alex,

I was curious since I hope to travel in Chile soon, so did a quick google search and came up with this site with the following advice:

Chile Forum: DO NOT USE UPS TO SEND STUFF TO CHILE!!!! : Living in Chile

To summarize:
Best: FedEx
Next best: DHL (more expensive) I have heard it referred to as DH-hell from folks in central america but apparently better service in Chile.

Worst: Postal Service or UPS

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
John Downs

Thanks for the info!

I´ve already had a positive experience with national courier service (3 days to deliver something from Santiago to San Pedro de Atacama with ChileExpress) and am awaiting delivery of my package from the UK - will let you know how it went.

Some numbers to give you an idea:

Package from UK -> Chile by Royal Mail International 5-day delivery
Dispatched: 6th October
Received: 28th October
Note: No tracking possible contrary to Royal Mail promises - once the package leaves the UK they say "we´ve done our bit".

Package from USA -> Chile by DHL (new amazon.com product)
Dispatched: 21st October
Received: 3rd November
Note: DHL received the package in Santiago, Chile on 23rd October and sat on it for more than a week, feeding me misinformation about extra money & information needed to import it in the country. In the end they handed it over to another courier (BlueExpress.cl) to deliver. Rubbish.

Now finally we can move on...