Sending and receiving packages in Puerto Rico

Here’s a tip that has helped me out while living in PR.  Sometimes companies will initially try to charge international shipping rates for items/packages going to PR. Since PR is part of the US Postal system, I wound up calling the company directly and talking to them. Believe it or not, many companies were unaware that PR was part of the USPS system, and I was able to get them to not only use Priority Mail,  but to change their shipping policies for future orders going to PR. Hope this helps!

Amazon is my biggest frustration. It’ll frequently tell you a seller won’t “ship to your country.” Ugh, my country is the US, jerks. But weirder - for example - they sometimes just WON’T sell stuff here. You cannot order the Amazon Echo products here. I even called on Black Friday - nope, Amazon officially does not sell their flagship items to PR.

Otherwise, the mail is identical to the US. No extra postage, maybe a day or two extra for regular mail, 3-7 days extra for packages (sometimes). We bought a mailbox from a shipping store because we wanted to have a person available to sign for packages. It’s about $200/yr and totally worth it.

Usps is the most efficient and easiest to Pr just make sure you use priority otherwise switch takes like 2-3 weeks. Amazon is less than ideal but I still have prime (takes 5ish days) and you can’t get everything... Reminding Peaople Pr is the us is one of my favorite things it usually doesn’t help people are idiots!

We use a post office po box for regular mail and some boxes and use also the post office to get packages that come via UPS. Post office gets them and scans them when I pick them up. so far no issues.

PR is a territory of the US but is not exactly part of the US. It is its own taxation / financial system and there are other twists and turns that make a difference for shipping items and for finances.

I order almost entirely from eBay and Amazon, and sometimes from other companies that offer free shipping like Target.  When family ships items, they always send it by USPS Priority for tracking and some small amount of insurance.  So far so good.  And probably half price of UPS or FedEx.  Everything arrives in San Juan by air and is trucked from there to a PO Box that is picked up by a vendor and delivered to a PMB in the pablado closest to my home.   Always seems to take some days longer than is indicated on the shipping arrival date estimate.  But so far nothing has been damaged.