#80 – The Expat Files: Life in Latin America – Tech, Mail, and More

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:03] Hi everybody, I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America. The show that tells you what it's really like to live, work, play and or retire in Latin America. I tell it just like it is, not the version they give you in those glossy travel magazines, or the picture they paint for you in those international traveler websites, where they're only trying to sell you something. What's it really like for expats living in Latin America? Well, it's time to take off those rose-colored glasses and find out. So let's get started. A while back I mentioned the fact that Apple computers are almost non-existent down here, although every big city has its Apple store and they sell iPods and iPhones and iPads. But I personally have yet to run into any local, Latin person that is, no matter how wealthy they are, that actually went out and bought an Apple computer.

[00:51] And though I've seen a few people with Apple computers, they were all brought down by expats from the first world. And most of these expats were hooked on the cult of Apple, because it is kind of a cult now isn't it? Anyway, nearly all of these fanatical Apple owners, when their machines finally break down, they find after much heartache, that it's much more cheaper and efficient to just throw in the towel and get a PC. Because there are just so few people around that can fix an Apple computer and upgrade it and all that without charging it three times what it would cost if the same thing happened to a standard PC. And I just want to mention that I'm looking at the Sunday edition of one of the big Latin newspapers down here, and this particular paper is out of Cartagena, Colombia. And here's what it says. This is the breakdown of sales for the last year for notebooks and laptop computers in

[01:37] Colombia. It says first that 30% of all these kind of computers were of the brand HP, which is of course Hewlett Packard. And the second best-selling brand was Toshiba at 25% of the market, and Dell Computer at 25% too. And the remaining 20% of the market is made up of those off-brand computers that you see in a lot of those low-end department stores and supermarkets. You know, the ones with the funky names like Bank and Dura brand. But the oddest thing is that Apple doesn't even make the list. Anyway I just thought I'd give you some written proof backing up my claim when I said a few shows ago that Apple just doesn't have much of the computer market down here at all. So there it is. Which means if you're into the Apple cult yourself, you're going to be between a rock and a hard place down here unless you live in a big city where they actually have an

[02:23] Apple outlet. And if you take it there of course you're going to pay through the nose to get any maintenance or upgrades. And though there are hundreds and hundreds of little mom and pop computer repair shops all over Latin America, and most of them impossibly cheap by US standards. And by the way, like I mentioned before, there are hundreds if not thousands of little cafe internets all over Latin America that charge 50 cents an hour to use the high speed internet. Which gives you a good idea of the cost of living down here now doesn't it? Now compare that with the cost of a small little internet outlet near the Miami airport, 3 bucks a minute, that's 6 times as much. And when you hear stories like that, it's no wonder why so many people want to move down to the third world. Anyway, if you bring your broken or damaged Apple computer into any one of these thousands

[03:08] of mom and pop computer repair shops, chances are if it's not a simple fix, they're not going to know what to do with it. Because they're not going to have real Apple replacement parts on hand, only the Apple stores have those. So if you're an Apple lover and you live a few hundred kilometers outside of a big city, when your Apple finally dies, you might consider using it as a doorstop. Unless of course, you have the time and the patience to do without it for about a week or two. Now suppose you were in that situation and you really loved your Apple computer, and you wanted to have it fixed come hell or high water. But you either didn't have a car to take it to the Apple store in downtown Managua, or you didn't have a week or two to waste waiting around for it to get fixed because you have a life in a little town 200 kilometers away. And you really, really need that computer. So how do you package up that computer and send it to the iPod store?

[03:56] Now that would be an alternative, wouldn't it? Well you could send it UPS or DHL or TNT or any one of those courier services because every one of those transnational courier companies and dozens more Latin based ones exist down here. And yes, they're 100% secure, but you're going to pay through the nose for it. Believe it or not, you're going to pay at least $100 just to ship that thing one way, because of its size and weight. Or you can use one of the local shipping companies that might only charge you $20 to $30 to ship it one way. But those companies are distinctly not first world, in quality or service, and you could tell by the ragged quality of their trucks and the dents and scratches bumps and dings in them. Not to mention the scruffy ragtag drivers they have on the job. But let's just say if you have a fragile package like a computer, it'll get to its destination

[04:45] alright, but it might have bounced around on the ground a few times before it got there, you'll never know. And as far as regular snail mail goes, that is another alternative. Every country does have it down here, and it's very cheap. For example, you can send a regular letter to anywhere in the world from down here, and the postage will cost you less than a dollar. And you could send a package about the size of a laptop computer, anywhere in a given latin country, for around $10. However the snail mail systems in these countries are absolutely insecure when you're talking about sending items that look like they have any kind of value. Like for example, a box that looks like it holds a laptop computer. For example, if you were to send a regular letter, or some legal documents, via snail mail, let's say from San Jose, Costa Rica, to Madison, Wisconsin.

[05:33] If it's letters or papers like that, you have about a 95% chance of that mail getting through, which means about 1 out of 20 letters you send will never get there, and for whatever reason just won't make it. And by the way, when you use any of the snail mail systems down here in Latin America, it's not like sending snail mail from the US post office, or a European post office. What I mean is, up in the first world, when you send a regular letter, by snail mail, it almost always arrives within a week or 10 days. And up in the first world, more than 99% of all mail gets through, which is far from what you can expect when using the government run snail mail down here in the third world. Because the fact is, it's very common when you send a letter from Latin America, from anywhere in Latin America, whether you're sending it locally or to a first world country,

[06:19] you'll find that it might not get to its final destination for 2 or even 3 months. And though the postal employee that takes your money and affixes your stamps to your will insist that it'll only take 1 or 2 weeks, I personally have had at least a dozen letters arrive 3, 4, 5, and even 6 months past the date that I sent them. And every expat I know tells the same story. Now suppose you were to send a music CD or a book from San Jose Costa Rica to Madison. Now in that case, the odds of it actually reaching its final destination start to go way down. The fact is, the bigger the package and the more likely that it contains something valuable, and not just a letter or some papers, the less chance it has of making it through. So if you're sending a CD or a book or a video game or a software package, or anything

[07:05] that has any mass or shape to it, in other words, anything that's not light and flexible like papers or a letter, just remember this, if it's important and you can't afford to lose it, don't send it by Latin American snail mail. There's about a 25% chance it's not going to get there, and that's easily explained. It's because down here in Latin America, the sorting and the routing phases of all government snail mail systems down here are not automated at all, not like they are in the first world. The fact is, if you send a letter from the first world, all the while it's being processed and routed, it might not be touched by human hands at all. Those places are highly automated, and everything's laser scanned and machine sorted and shuffled around by robots. In fact, the only flesh and blood person that might touch your letter at all before you

[07:51] get it is the actual mailman who finally delivers it to your doorstep. Whereas down in the third world here, with practically no automation, there could be 15 or even 20 people touching your letter and looking at it before you ever get it. And any one of those 20 people along the way could have sticky fingers if they see that you're sending something valuable. Because remember, these are third world government employees making only two or three hundred bucks a month. And if you're down on vacation in Peru and you decide to send a very nice alpaca sweater to one of your friends up in Idaho, you've only got about a 75% chance that that sweater is going to make it all the way, and even less if you send it around Christmas time. Because around that time, all those government postal workers are having a cash crunch. They have to buy presents for their friends and family too, all on their meager salaries,

[08:37] and guess what? An alpaca sweater makes a nice Christmas present, even if it's stolen. Now because Latin postal systems have to work hand in hand with first world postal systems, since they're always in the process of handing over and exchanging packages and letters with each other, these third world postal services in an attempt to clean up their bad reputation of losing mail, and their trademark laziness and general inefficiencies, have instituted a big first world PR step that they think will engender more trust with the public. Nowadays all third world post offices offer regular mail and registered mail, and if mailing a normal letter to anywhere in the world costs, let's say, a dollar, then registered mail will add about $1.50 to that cost, and it's set up just like registered mail is set

[09:23] up in the first world. You sign a little receipt, which is stuck onto the letter, along with a computer barcode that can be scanned, so if they want, they can track that letter as it moves through the system. And if it doesn't get there or thought to be lost, it's got a computer trail that can be followed. And one of the other supposed advantages to sending registered mail is that it's supposed to get to its destination about twice as fast. That along with the fact that it's supposed to be much more secure and likely to get through. But let me give you the real lowdown. I've sent mail both ways many times, snail mail and registered mail, and I've found out that there's almost no difference. Except when you pay that buck and a half for registered mail, you get the feeling that your mail is going to get an extra boost through the system somehow. It's purely psychological. And at that moment, when you're filling out those extra forms, it actually seems that

[10:11] the people at the post office are really taking extra care with your letter. And you get this false sense of security that what they're doing is almost first world. I mean, how could it not get through okay? My god, it has a barcode. But then again, so does a box of condoms. But just because it looks kind of first world, that doesn't mean a thing. Because I've tried mailing a letter and packages both ways, many times. And registered mail doesn't get there any sooner or any more securely than if you'd have sent it the usual way. In fact, I've lost registered mail letters. That is, they never got delivered. And when I went back to the post office and tried to have the letter tracked, they just couldn't or wouldn't do it. The people at the local post office here said if the mail was lost within the country, they could track it. But once it got to the United States or Europe, when it finally reached their territory, that

[11:01] was the end of the tracking. In other words, the only thing they could say for sure was that it made it to the country destination. And never could they tell me what happened to it from there. But coincidentally, in the last few years, I've lost a few registered letters within the Latin country I sent them. And still, they were unable to track them down, even though they promised me at the post office that they could. So the bottom line is this. They've got registered mail service here, and it looks official and nice. And because it looks almost first world, expats, tourists, and all sorts of foreigners use it all the time. Not knowing, of course, that it does no better than the regular cheap service. And the fact is, it's a huge moneymaker for the post office, because they can collect more than double the regular postage, yet they have no internal infrastructure to actually

[11:47] do some serious tracking, which is what registered mail is supposed to be all about, right? And here's another bit of information I'm going to reveal here for the first time. Not so long ago, I was at one of those notorious embassy parties, which I told you in the past are usually filled to the brim with posers, bootlickers, and brown-nosers, just the kind of people you'd like to punch in the face, but unfortunately, they have bodyguards with guns. Anyway, I actually got to speak to a Latin official who formerly was a highly placed official in the postal system in his country. And I couldn't help but ask him about the registered mail service. And when I told him about my own experience, and that I thought it wasn't any better or any more secure than sending it by the cheaper route, he told me that the problem boiled down to the lack of computerization, like I said before.

[12:32] He did acknowledge that there were too many hands in the till, and I'm sure his was too. And he told me there were too many manual checkpoints along the way, just like I suspected, and therefore a greater chance for human error. And the fact that registered mail itself carries with it the unintended consequence that it seems to everyone who's handling it, that whatever's inside the package is much more valuable and important than regular mail, which, or people wouldn't bother to pay the extra charge. At least that's what the postal employees are thinking, which increases the temptation to steal dramatically. And because of that, he said, there are actually more registered pieces of mail stolen than with mail sent the regular, much cheaper way, which is a hell of a twist if you ask me. But according to third world logic, it makes sense.

[13:18] So remember that expats and expat wannabes out there? When you're visiting Panama City or Costa Rica or Cancun or wherever, and you want to send something back to the states or Europe, if you're sending something valuable or time sensitive, don't use the regular snail mail and don't be fooled by the fact that they have registered mail. So how can an expat or an expat wannabe, or even a sometime traveler, send mail up to the first world like the United States or Europe and be 100% sure that it's going to get there? Well, like I said before, you can use DHL or UPS or any one of the big transnational courier services, but if you use one of them, just a simple one page letter will cost you anywhere from 50 to $90 to send to any place around the world, including Europe or the United States. And you'll get that nice, as promised, first world three or four day courier service and

[14:08] you'll be given a routing number so you'll be able to track it anywhere it is in the world from your courier's internet site. But who's going to spend 50 to $90 just to send a letter? That's just nuts. So once again, how do you send a regular old letter or a package nice and safe and secure? Well the fact is, down here in every big city, they have mailboxes, etc. and a lot of internet cafes and Kinko's clones that provide mailing service to the first world too. And they'll usually have a sign posted to that effect. And it turns out these services are much more secure than the government mail systems down here, but they're also about three times as expensive. For example, if you walk into mailboxes, etc., or one of the Kinko's clones, they might charge you from $3 to $5 to send a regular letter to the United States or any place in the rest

[14:56] of the world like Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Bangkok, or wherever. But here's something they don't tell you, and it's something most people will never know. Now places like mailboxes, etc., and these Kinko clones allow you to rent your own personal mailbox and you get your own personal key just like the mailbox services up in the US. And you can rent a box for months, even years if you like. And if you rent one of those boxes, you get a discounted rate when you send mail to the first world. That is, instead of having to spend $4 to send a letter to the first world, which is their usual charge for a walk-in trade like me or anybody off the street that wants to send a letter to the first world, they do provide that service for anyone. You don't actually have to be a client that rents a mailbox there. They'll still send your letters and take your money.

[15:43] Anyway, if you're one of their regular clients, you might pay $2.50 to get that letter to the United States. And here's how they usually do it. They have maybe 100 or 200 clients, and every week they collect all that mail that's going to the United States, Europe, or wherever, and they put it in a box and send it on a plane to Miami, where they have a branch office. Now the Miami office opens that mail and affixes regular US postage stamps on all the envelopes and packages, and someone from that office takes them down to the local post office and mails them through the regular US mail to wherever they're going to go, whether it's Europe, Japan, Bangkok, or Nebraska. Because the company knows once those letters and packages get the proper postage stamps affixed and enter into the US postal system, more than 99% of them will get through no

[16:30] matter where you send them. Now that isn't to say the US post office is to be all and end all. It's not. For all its faults, and the fact that it's bankrupt, and losing billions of dollars a year, it seems like the US post office flies with the wings of the angels compared to the post offices down here in Latin America. That's all I'm saying. So even if you think these services, like mailboxes etc, and Kinko's and so many others, that they have some kind of a special deal going with the US postal service, well you're wrong. They just drop their mail off at the US post office just the way you and I might send it. But there is one big advantage for expats down here, when they sign up for their own physical post box, at a place like mailboxes etc, or one of these Kinko's clones, or any one of a number of private postal forwarding services down here, even though it might cost

[17:19] 50 or 100 dollars a year to keep that box active. And the advantage to that of course is, you can send and receive mail from that box from anywhere in the world. And it's extremely safe and secure. And you might consider dishing out that 50 or 100 bucks, if you still have some connections up in the first world, whether it's business, family, or private. Because in that case, it's likely you're going to get a certain amount of packages and letters. And you're going to want to make sure that they get to you safely and securely. And chances are, if you used a regular snail mail, you might have just a little better than a 50-50 chance of it ever arriving. Depending of course on the size and weight of your package, how many people have touched it, and the time of year you're sending it. So forget that and go with one of these private mail forwarding services. And how do you find one of these mail forwarding services that has a branch in the United States?

[18:07] Well they're listed in all the yellow pages in every big city down here in Latin America under Correo, which means mail service in Spanish. Or you can Google Correo in the country that you're living in, or Google mail forwarding services in that country. And also you should know that every one of these places has someone who speaks very good English. So if your Spanish sucks, don't worry. Anyway, all these private mail box services in Latin America have a satellite office in Miami, USA. And if you're a client of theirs, your mailing address is not going to be Lima, Peru, but the Miami office of your mail forwarding service. So anyone wanting to send a letter or package to me would put my name on it and a PO box number followed by the Miami mailing address of the satellite office. And here's how they handle your incoming mail and make sure that it's secure.

[18:56] Once a week that satellite office in Miami will collect all the client mail that came in, including mine, box it up, and send it on a plane to Peru. And my mail forwarding service down in Peru, mailboxes, etc., or whoever, will pick up that box, bring it down to their office in the city, and put my mail if I have any in my little box. And that's what I pay that 50 or 100 bucks yearly service for. So I can securely get my mail coming in from the first world or wherever, directly off the plane as it arrives to the airport. And another advantage to having one of these private PO boxes is that if you order anything from the internet by credit card or PayPal, of course, you just give them your Miami address and you'll always get that product delivered. And of course your mailbox company will charge you extra depending on the weight and size

[19:43] of your box if it's not a simple letter. For example, I ordered a small portable water purifier, and it cost about $125 when ordered from the internet, and I ended up paying about $20 more for shipping and customs charges, which are called adwana charges, which is another great advantage for having one of these private PO boxes. Because you see, if you order a product from another country, specifically the United States via internet, if it's over $50 or $100, many times you'll have to pay an import tax. And the amount and percentage depends on the country you're in and their rules and regulations about that sort of thing. But if you're one of those private mailbox clients, they'll take care of all that for you. When they get the product, let's say in this case a water filter, and it lands at the airport in the country that you're living in, coming from the mailbox satellite office in Miami

[20:31] of course, anyway, when they pick that product up at the airport, along with the other mail that came in from their clients in Miami, they'll go right to the adwana or customs office with all the items that are not letters that come with a paid invoice, like my little water filter. Anyway, the guy from your mailbox company will go to the adwana office with that stuff, which is usually only a few steps away, so there's almost no delay with that, and pay your taxes and fees for you right there. And since your mailbox company is doing this all the time, bringing things back and forth from airplanes to the adwana and paying taxes for the products that their clients are bringing in from Miami, they are on a kind of friendly basis with the customs officials, they know each other by name, which often gets you a lower tax rate and eliminates a lot of red tape, simply because they work with them on a day to day basis, and therefore know all

[21:19] the angles. Now, if you don't have one of these mailboxes, and you have a company from the United States let's say, like Amazon for example, well if they ship an item down that you've directly ordered from them on the internet, in that case the only shipping options you have are the ones that Amazon gives you when you order the product, you'll usually end up getting it through a much more expensive courier service, because the manufacturer or company that sends that out to you, like Amazon, wants to make sure it gets in your hands, they don't want to take any chances, and they know courier services guarantee delivery, even to foreign countries, and in fact it might be the only way they deliver to foreign countries. And sometimes, after you've been notified that your product has arrived, you'll actually have to go down to the airport customs office yourself, and wait an hour or two in line,

[22:05] and pay those import taxes and fees, which can be a big pain in the ass believe me, especially if you live in the boonies and it's a long trip to the airport. But if you're like me and a lot of other expats who've been living down here for an awful long time, we don't usually order too many things from the first world using the internet, we get almost everything we need down here. It turns out that in time, most expats tend to wean themselves off of dependency on first world mailing services like that, we can wait till new cutting edge first world products, make it down here on their own. We don't have to be the first one on the block anymore to have every little gadget that comes out. We get this stuff in time, and don't lose any sleep over it. Now that's one of the real advantages to being an expat down here. We don't rattle very easily, we have a lot of patience, and we don't camp out in front

[22:52] of the Apple store three days before the next iPhone comes out. So it really doesn't pay for me and a lot of expats to have one of these postal mailboxes. Not if you only order one or two things a year from a first world country using the internet. So what do I do if I don't have a mailbox? Well, I have a lot of expat friends and latin friends who do have these mailboxes, and they have no problem letting a friend use this service once in a while. A couple of times a year is no bother at all to them, and it doesn't cost them anything, you just use their Miami address and you pay for the charges. And the same thing goes if you want to send a package or something important to the first world, you just use their mailbox code. And there's no shortage of people down here with those mailboxes. In fact, every upscale latin businessman worth his salt has one of these PO boxes.

[23:38] Because latins love everything in anything first world. And wealthy latins, they have these mailboxes because their wives and kids are forever ordering stuff from the first world off the internet. Because they love everything first world, even what I'd consider pure first world crap. But they can afford it. So all you expats and expat wannabes out there, let me assure you. There are no shortage of people willing to let you use their mailbox if you have to order something. But if you yourself have a business and end up ordering a lot of stuff from the first world, so as not to lean on your friends too much, you might be better off getting one yourself. Now back to that Apple computer that needs to get repaired. You remember I was talking about that at the beginning of the show. Well I told you, you should never send it by regular mail, and if you use one of those big courier services like DHL or UPS, it's gonna cost you a hundred bucks one way.

[24:27] Well here's a great tip on how to handle a situation like that for any time that you have to ship something within your country, whether it's a letter, a package, a computer, or a motorcycle. And you want it to get to the destination securely, safely, and cheaply. Well as long as you're shipping it within the confines of one particular Latin American country, let's say Costa Rica or Panama or Chile, well there is a very safe, secure, and cheap way to do it. And here's how it goes. Now every country has its public bus service, run by the government of course. And the buses are horrible, the service is terrible, they break down all the time, they're crime ridden, they're huge polluters, and the drivers are absolutely reckless. But every Latin American country also has a number of private bus lines, and they don't

[25:12] have routes like your regular city bus lines do. They usually have a central terminal in all the big cities within a country, and they stop to pick up and deliver people, and just take them from city to city. Pretty much exactly like Greyhound buses do up in the states. Anyway these private buses are cheap by our first world standards, but vastly more expensive than public buses. So the buses themselves are in much better condition, newer, and better maintained. The drivers are paid better than public bus drivers, so they have more pride in their work and they're less reckless. And because these buses are much more expensive to ride, there's a much higher class of people on board. Now all these private bus lines also provide a private package delivery service. And in my experience, my packages have always gotten to their destination, I've never lost

[25:58] one yet in 20 years. And how it works is like this, you go down to the private bus depot in your city or town, and even the smallest towns have these bus depots, so if you're in the sticks, there's always at least one small town very close by. Anyway you drop off your letter or your package to the bus dispatcher at one of these private bus lines, pay only about 5 bucks no matter what kind of package you have, and within a day or two it'll end up at the bus depot of whatever city you addressed it to, but only within that country of course. And since your package is riding along with the driver, and it usually has a lockbox right up front or under its seat, it's a very secure way to ship things. And the only thing you have to do is to notify the party that's receiving your package that they have to go down and pick it up at the local bus depot.

[26:43] And I repeat, this is an excellent system as long as you're sending something within the confines of one country. But if you want to send a package to a neighboring country, this is not a good idea, because if your package gets stalled at the customs office at the border of the neighboring country, that bus will not wait to sort things out. Because he's got a schedule to keep, and you'll have to get there somehow yourself to retrieve that package, and though it's not that likely a thing like that could happen, I know a few expats it has happened to. Their package got stuck at the border, simply because the purchase receipt was in English and not Spanish, and the customs officials didn't speak English and wanted it translated. So my expat buddy ended up wasting a whole day on the road, just to get a $30 blood pressure cuff and digital thermometer out of the Aduana. I would have just left it there.

[27:30] Anyway, you get the idea. South of the border, down Mexico way. You've been listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America, and don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America. The Expat Files at gmail.com. That's theexpatfiles at gmail.com. See you next time. Nos vemos. South of the border.