Chile Express Experience

[Mendoza]

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.

[eeuunikkeiexpat]

Correos de Chile is the worst for any international document send.

Two times I’ve sent papers to the US, THEY WERE BOTH LOST BY CORREOS.

Never again. FEDEX-only for to the USA documents.

[feargle]

Another Chilexpress story

Last month I received a packet that should have contained Vape liquids. But when I opened it, I found these:

I tried to query this with Chilexpress,no reply

I asked the Vape shop to contact Chilexpress, no reply.

I contacted the real owners of these gizmos, a company called Payscan. They are Point Of Sale devices for vending machines. I emailed them several times, but only received automated replies.

I contacted the intended recipients of these devices, [email protected] by email. Again, no answer.

Rubbish responses from all involved. In future, I won’t purchase from sellers who only use Chilexpress - and I’ll tell them why. The whole affair just indicates how half-assed Customer Service can be here.

But given the volume of spam and fraud mails we receive just about every day, perhaps my mails just ended up in Junk boxes.

Incidentally, I have always used DHL for important stuff, but apart from mislaying a £5,000 international money order once, (that turned up some months later), they have been OK.

[bytesurfer]

Interesting topic. I too had used Correos and I sent a document to the US via certified. The document didn’t arrive. So I used Chile Express to send the document again and it got there ok.

The DHL office in Temcuo isn’t a full blown DHL office but just an agent. I think they also sell Herbal Life or something. I have had issues with them in the past, the office and not DHL per se. Once tried to send a passport to Santiago to get renewed via that office, but they were making it hard to do that time that I tried. The times before it went ok. I got a DHL paid shipping label (forget the term right now) to include when I sent the passport. The embassy uses DHL to send the new passport back. I just used ChileExpress next to the post office to send the documents. And later I got the renewed passport back at the DHL office. I used ChileExpress to send documents to Argentina a few times with success. I think I used the FedEX office in Temuco to send some documents in the past too. They worked. So my experience is a bit different.

[mem]

Some of these bad experiences may be specific to the locations involved. For instance in IX ive used chile express to send documents to the US and while its painfully expensive it has never failed to arrive and had tracking. For me the only other option is correos without driving an hour or two away. Way cheaper but its more fire and forget. Also had decent experience buying stuff locally in country and sent via chilexpress.

Sounds like in santiago and around Arica though its more hit or miss or miss or miss …especially if there is no tracking