Chile Forum

Hi,

A question probably asked many times, I need a good Customs Broker. I am in the UK at present and all my personal belongings are being collected by the shipping company 2nd March 2011. They say I need to notify in advance a Broker, this will speed up the clearance through customs.

Also they said that a customs broker will advise on certain delivery companies.

Has anyone gone through this process in the past and can you advise a good broker and local delivery company. I am moving to Maipu Santiago, wife and kids are there already since January.

One other thing I have been told is that you need to have your inventory legalized before your belongings arrive.

Anyone who can help thanks in advance.

Ron

Yea, you really need to start on the shipping end here with a company inside Chile and work your way backwards. That is the people that will ultimately clear it through customs, and get it to your house.

The shipping companies outside the country are typically about 100% of the time 100% wrong about how shipping to Chile works (they will try to convince you differently, but we have never met one that really knew). Essentially, they are as clueless about how it works as their clients (at least clients have an excuse, as it is not their business).It is far more involved than just hiring a customs broker.

For instance, you do not need a "legalized" shipping lists, but you better have the proper itemized bill of lading list in the proper format or you are about to enter customs hell. The customs broker / agent just pushes it through customs clearing, then you still need to get it moved to the final destination.

We do handle coordinating shipping, but generally only get involved when things go off the rails between customs, customs agents, immigration, foreign shipping company, local shipping company, truckers, <insert long list of people that could possibly screw it up here>.

I have used Ward to and from Canada 3 times without complaint door to door.

http://www.wardvanlines.com/english/home/index.php

When we sent our container from Calgary Canada at the end of November 2010, we expected no end of problems. We used Tippett Richardson at the Canadian end and they set us up with Decapack in Chile who did everything for us and got us in and out of customs with no problems even though they had fun with our container and threatened to fine us for having some things with price tags on them,(therefore not considered used household goods). But no-one has ever contacted us and when we checked what had price tags on them it was a few things like a hammock and a lawn chair with stickers where no-one sees them.
Decapack emailed us when we got here and we did everything that the young lady told us to do. I believe they also have bilingual staff, but you could check on that if you need it.
If you don't have a contract yet with the company I would look for someone who can do the whole thing, like we did.
Check the spelling of Decapack (Decapac or Decapak). They are in Santiago.
Hope it's ok to put this info on the forum, if not, Admin can slap me (not really!)

Cheers
Linda

I have no problem with it. The reason I don't recommend one is because the moment we do, they are guaranteed to go down the drain with some nightmare story with the very next shipment they handle.

Make it a policy not to tie our name to any one company. Goes for a lot of things in Chile.

You could well be right Charles!
The lady that we dealt with was extremely firm on us doing everything she told us to do (my husband dealt with her and he was scared of her I think!) and we filled out paperwork for her numerous times because she kept getting us to change our numbers. Wasn't comfortable with that but I remembered somebody on the forum who had to pay some kind of horrendous amount of money because they didn't want to listen to the customs agent. It worked out well for us and as well our guy from Tippett Richardson in Calgary had told us that a number of his customers (returning Chileans and non-chileans) had been very happy with them.
Just as a matter of interest, Tippett Richardson also arranged the movement of the container from Valparaiso to El Quisco where we live and they off loaded it and installed everything in the house with no problem.