| A few mail companies provide clients with a mail drop
and P.O. box in Miami and a physical address where they can
send or receive packages. This enables customers living in
Costa Rica to have their mail sent to the Miami address from
where the companies forward the mail to Costa Rica.
Aerocasillas (P.O. Box 4567-1000, San José, Costa
Rica, Tel: 2084868, Fax: 257-1187, E-mail: servicesjo@aerocasillas.com,
http://www. aerocasillas.com) is the oldest of these companies.
Besides their main office, they have branches in the suburbs
and in other areas of the country: La Uruca, San José
232-6892; Curridatbat, San José, 2246381; Novacentro,
Guadalupe, 224-9843; Cartago, 592-0000; Limón, 798-0606,
ext. 6; Ciudad Quesada, 461-0683; San Ramón 440-8793;
Jacó 643-0049 and Quepos 777-1925.
Trans-Express Interlink (P.O. Box 02-5635, Miami, FL 33102,
Tel: 296-3973/296-3974, Fax; 232-3979); AAA Express Mail (Tel:
233-4993, Fax: 221-5056); Star Box (P.O. Box 405/1000, San
José, Tel: 257-3443, Fax: 233-5624); Jet Box (Tel:
231-5592 in Pavas, 253-5400, in Curridabat and 665-0017 in
Liberia, see http://www.jetbox. com); Daily Mail (Tel: 233-4993,
Fax: 221-5046); and Air Mail CR (239-5775) are other companies
offering similar services.
Postal Related Service
Mail Boxes Etc. (291-0282), has a store in Rohrmoser
at Plaza Amistad, Local 8, 400 meters east of Plaza Mayor.
They also have branches at Parque Empresarial Forum in Santa
Ana (204-7441) and in Curridabat, across from Pops Ice Cream
(Tel: 357-9429).
They provide the same services as the companies above plus
packing and shipping, office supplies and a photocopy center,
as well as selling Hallmark greeting cards and stationery
and offer notary and legal services and more.
These companies provide much faster service than the Costa
Rican mail system to access mail order products from the United
States, to enable clients to subscribe to magazines and newspapers
at U.S. domestic rates, to help obtain replacement parts from
abroad and to order directly from mail order catalogs such
as Land's End, J.C. Penny and L.L. Bean. Large automobile
parts may also be ordered from the United States. You can
pick up your correspondence directly from their offices or
have your letters and packages picked up and delivered to
your home or office at any time you choose. They will also
get packages out of Customs for you and save you a lot of
headaches.
We have used one of these services for more than four years
and in general their service has been good. Because of the
nature of our book business, we have an unusually high volume
of incoming and outgoing mail. Our letters, books, packages,
monies and other mail reach their U.S. destinations almost
as fast as if they were mailed from another city in the United
States. This reliable service makes doing business from Costa
Rica very easy.
Most of the private mail companies offer Certified Mail,
Registered Mail, Express Mail and FedEx, UPS, DHL or other
courier services.
Rates at any of these private mail services run from about
$15 to $60 or more per month, depending on the amount of mail
you receive and whether you have a business or personal account.
Members of ARCR also have access to these companies, paying
no monthly fee, but only for the weight of the mail received.
This is very useful for receiving small amounts of mail.
Note: Taxes, Customs charges and restrictions can make shipping
goods into Costa Rica a complicated business, but numerous
private mail companies offer services that can help residents
navigate the sometimes confusing rules for bringing in goods.
There are a few restrictions on what can be brought into
Costa Rica. Restricted items such as food and medicine require
approval from the Health Ministry. The ministry gives special
permission for medicines that treat terminal diseases. Permits
can be obtained in person at the Health Ministry. However,
some private mail companies will get the documents for you
for a fee.
International goods brought into Costa Rica are subject to
taxes and Customs handling charges, which also make international
shipping more complicated than sending packages domestically.
Taxes vary widely based on the product brought into the country.
Compact disks, for example, are subject to a one percent
tax, while car parts are taxed at 30 percent and electronic
parts at 50 percent.
Customs handling rates begin at $2 for books and items worth
up to $25, and rise up to $50 for items worth $1,000 or more,
according to the Aerocasillas website http://www.aeropost.com.
A recent change in regulations allows Costa Rican residents
to bring up to $500 worth of goods into the country tax-free
once every six months, though the limit includes the item's
cost, the shipping charges according to Customs, and any insurance
on the item.
The documents for the tax exemption are available from the
Customs office at Juan Santamaría International Airport
in Alajuela.
Mail companies, such as Aerocasillas, guide their customers
through this process, which requires: an exemption alert form
with information about the package and the supplier, to be
submitted at least 24 hours before the package arrives; an
original identification card or passport and three signed
copies; a power of attorney form; and a commercial invoice.
Aerocasillas provides these forms on its website and charges
$20 plus sales tax for the service.
For those of you who choose to send something to an address
outside Costa Rica, there are certain regulations and options.
You should be aware that many countries restrict what types
of items can be sent across their borders. The United States,
for example, has special regulations for shipping goods such
as coffee, liquor, fruit and other foods, medications and
drugs. For shipping these items to the United States, see
the website for the U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration.at http://www.fda.
International couriers such as DHL, UPS and FedEx, which
we mentioned earlier in this chapter, can help with shipping
items abroad. These companies can handle a wide variety of
shipping orders, large or small, and have extensive services
to meet individual shipping and tracking needs. Although they
offer high-speed, door-to-door shipping of documents and packages,
their services can be on the expensive side.
DHL, for example, can ship from Costa Rica to Miami in 24 hours, and anywhere
else in the Unites States in 48 hours. To Europe, DHL can
get your package or letter there in three or four days.
Shipping through DHL can be done by first calling the company's Costa Rica call
center open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 209-6000. Their operators
will answer questions and quote prices.
For next-day delivery to Seattle, a four-kilogram box would cost $123.30 and
a letter would cost $40.66. To send a box to Miami would cost
$83.93 and a letter $19.12. To ship the same size box to London,
England would run $198.66 and the letter would cost $68.68.
DHL also provides an array of other services, such as online tracking and shipping
and printable Customs forms, the details of which can be found
on its Costa Rica-specific website, http://www.dhl.co.cr/publish/cr/
es.high.html.
Jet Box (253-5400,http:// www.jetbox.com), a smaller, Costa Ricanbased company
that still has a global reach, also offers courier service,
with personalized pricing. Senders can set up contracts for
$3 to $8 per kilogram to the United States, for example, which
is their most common destination. The pricing depends on volume,
location and how regularly they ship. In addition, if a person
regularly ships small items and wants to ship a large item,
the company will offer a special price.
Another shipping company with membership-based rates is Star Box (289-9393),
which offers memberships as low as $2.50 a month. With that
membership, clients have the right to send a certain weight
of goods per month. The per-kilo cost depends on the membership.
Aerocasillas (208-4848, http://www.aerocasillas.com), focuses mainly on shipping
items into Costa Rica; however, it does ship mail and documents
to the United States through Miami.
For larger items, a freight company such as Ship to Costa Rica (2588747 or from
the United States or Canada 1-866-245-6923 toll-free) will
have to be used. Shipping from Costa Rica to the east or west
coast of the United States takes approximately 12 days, and
only six days to Miami. To Europe, for example, the shipping
time is from 15 to 20 days. *Part of this section is reprinted
with permission of The Tico Times. See: http://www.
ticotimes.net.
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