Online shopping in Costa Rica

The only "cost affective" way that I am aware of is to ship to someone in the States that can bring items down for you.  We are very fortunate that we have several friends that go to the States fairly regularly.  They bring back bird-feed and toys for my daughters rescue birds.  Quality bird food is not even available here.

I am not aware of anyone that ships packages for a reasonable cost any longer.  The government cracked down on shippers that were shipping for reasonable prices.  I know shippingcr.com is no long shipping small packages - just full containers and cars.

- Expat Dave

There is WISH.com and while they have a very limited selection, they do have some good stuff for a good price.
The thing is it is very iffy as to when you will get it; apparently it is all shipped from China and by different sellers - kind of like Amazon Marketplace in that respect (different sellers, not WISH itself).

So my best friend here, a Tico, has used it numerous times and his experience has been good although in some cases his stuff has not arrived for over 6 months! That said, they paid him back for the stuff not arriving... then it arrived. So he got it free.

And a friend of his recently ordered stuff from WISH twice, and got it within 8 days.
So it's not amazon for sure, but it might be worth giving it a try on some low priced stuff and see what happens. Roll the dice!

I also heard a rumor that the government here is going to start allowing online ordering without import taxes. I find that hard to believe. But it sure would be great.

Oh, and my friend also buys stuff from EBAY (those sellers who do ship here) and he's had great service and keeps telling me to try it. He has had no problem with stuff ending up in Customs from ebay. Nor Wish.