For a passport application for my son, I needed to send the old passport to the UK passport office.
I went to both Chile Express and the post office in Talagante but they both said as I was sending an old UK passport to the UK passport office (as part of the application for a new passport) I had to pay some fee (about 90,000 I think). This is not optional but is required for documents.
So to avoid the fee I decided to just lie, but I couldn’t of course go back to the same places in Talagante as they would know so I had to go somewhere else. However, this meant I had to send the old passport to someone else in the UK and ask them to forward (otherwise they will see in the address where I am sending and refuse to let me send it without the ripoff fee). So I redid the envelope with my parents address.
So I tried a bunch of other places, just lying in all of them and saying it was a letter and a small book in the packet.
First I tried to go to a Chile Express in La Islita but when I got there I was told it closed down so I went to Chile Express in Isla de Maipo but they said they are a smaller office than can’t do international post at that location so I went to a smaller Chile Express in Padre Hurtado that was really just a shop and they said they didn’t have the necessary stickers so I went to another one near there that said their system was down (but only at that location) so then I went to yet another Chile Express on Camino Melipilla still in Padre Hurtado near where they said I had to provide the RUT for the person in England I was sending to, and refused to do it without that. I suppose I could have given the person’s passport number or National Insurance number, had I known it.
So then I went to the Correos de Chile in Padre Hurtado (which is part of the urban area of Santiago to the SW but not really part of the city) and they were unable to help, I can’t even remember why, so then I went to the Correos de Chile on Pajaritos in Maipu which finally worked and it was 10,000 or 20,000.
Obviously I made various mistakes here.
I actually realized though that this sort of bureaucratic inefficiency isn’t as common as it used to be. I think things have got better over the years and this type of experience now feels like the exception rather than the standard.
I might mostly avoid Chile Express in future, they seem fairly poor, but maybe it depends on your specific needs and experiences and which location. The larger locations seems a bit better.