Spanish postal service

[Tracy]

I've heard various rumors about the (un)reliability of the postal service in Spain. For those of you with experience living in Spain - what do you think?

[Ben]

I would say slow rather than unreliable - things get there in the end, but it usually takes several days longer than in the UK for example. Always send things special/recorded delivery if they are important.

[greytop]

I would say it depends on where you live. Ben in Madrid and myself in a smaller town probably have a good service (except parcel delivery which is usually a not to collect it yourself). Out in the country or on an urbanisation it may be worse. My friends live about 4km away from Pego on a hillside urbanisation. They have no home delivery, so collect theirs from a mail box for example.
In the Correos office itself things can be very slow. We have 3 "windows" only one of which is manned usually. Some transactions such as money transfer can tie up the staff for 10-15 minutes by which time a long queue has formed. If you return in an hour then things are usually back to normal.
I regularly order on the internet from UK and get deliveries within 7 - 10 days via mail, even quicker by courier serice. Delivery charges can be quite high though.
Anyway I came here to slow down so who cares>:D

[Culebronchris]

In the country I think it depends on whether they recognise your name or not, until they do the stuf just disappears..

When I lived on the coast for a while post turned up very erratically but reliably, nothing for thee weeks then stacks of the stuff but, when we moved to a small village, we lost lots and lots of really important mail. We finally took out a PO box to deal with the problem.

Nowadays the post office people tell me in the street if there is stuff waiting for me. They seemed very keen to tell me there was a traffic fine waiting for me!

[Paco]

I wonder if I send something from the States How long should take?
I think everywhere is the same, a letter for my brother from Pennsylvania to Miami, Florida takes two weeks. He is in a "blue collar development" a letter to my sister in law, from Pennsylvania to Miami florida. 4 days, she is in a very very rich "development" could you explain that. Money? position? all of the above. How about that? Ciao Paco.:eek:

[saiguanas]

two weeks is too long for any point to point in the US. I usually find that from Texas I can get most things to anywhere in 3-4 days.

[TotallyKen]

In general the postal service in Spain works well. Much slower than in the UK or US but it works. A word of warning though, if you need to send something semi-urgent do not use the "urgente" service. Believe it or not it actually gets there slower than the regular mail. It seems like it´s handled differently. Either use the regular mail if it´s not really urgent or use the "postal express". Avoid "urgente".

[omeyas]

In general the postal service in Spain works well.

You would appear to be much happier with your service than most of the expats down south! :) This thread, (http://andalucia.com/forums/viewtopic-t9872.htm) especially towards the end, doesn't have many good things to say about the postal service.

[cubix]

I wonder if I send something from the States How long should take?


When I was in Spain last week, I dropped about 10 postcards in a mailbox in Salamanca on Tuesday and they arrived at their destinations(various places in the southern US) on tuesday, so about a week

[sandy]

The most incredible thing that happened to me when we lived in Madrid was that my letters from foreign countries would arrive without stamps sometimes. I didn't know who ripped them off but I had to assume it was the letter carrier since the local post office would not have delivered a letter without a stamp, right?


The post office branch responsible for my area was the one on Arturo Soria closed to the gas station.

sandy
---------------
www.excelwines.com (http://www.excelwines.com)

[Damian Corrigan]

I've been told that I've been quite unlucky, but I've had two important things go missing in Spain, and I'd call myself a light user of the postal service.

In the first place I lived in, the postman would often leave packages on top of the mail box rather than give them a note to collect it from the post office.

I sent a letter to Japan and a letter to the UK last week and the letter to Japan arrived first. :S

Make sure you have your name on your mail box. I don't know if its Spanish paranoia, but I've been told there is a risk they will return the letter undelivered if your name isn't on there.


Damian

[Damian Corrigan]

I've had two important things go missing in Spain


Make that three.

The British Embassy forgot to put my apartment number on my package, but the postman wasn't intelligent enough to read my mailbox and work out that maybe the parcel was for me.

What makes it worse is that the mailboxes in my building don't even have apartment numbers, so the postman has to read the mailboxes anyway!

But, as the lady in the post office told me "if something is missing, the postman doesn't deliver it". What happened to that famous Spanish lax attitude towards the rules. I think the **** was just lazy - it was time for him to finish work so he used the missing information as an excuse not to deliver my parcel.

Maybe I should give him the benefit of the doubt, but I am so angry. I keep losing things in the post in this country, and this time its my passport, so its hardly a trifling matter. I've already spent 7€ in phone calls to the Embassy's expensive phone number in my attempts to rectify the situation.

Damian

[SuziQ]

I was really amazed, I recieved Dvds in a jiffy bag from California in 4 days..:o
& a large heavy parcel from the same place in 7days. These were both 'normal' postal packages the sender sent me the link for the postoffice site so that I could track the 2nd parcel. It took 3 days to leave the sender & arrive in Spanish customs, 3 days to clear customs & delivered the 7th day & yes I did pay duty & Iva :'(
From my personal experience post from & to the UK (& Germany) has been fair, nothing lost :thumbs-up: so far ;D

Very very important to make sure you give the correct address.
Sounds obvious, but when we moved in, the agent, did not give us the right address !!!!!!!

[sandy]

I think it depends a great deal on which post office handles your letters which ultimately depends on the people who work there. Since the turnover rate especially in government offices is almost zero, if you are lucky to live in neighbourhood with a post office full of responsible people, your letters will not go missing. Where I live now, in the last summer, days would go by and I would not receive any mail. And then I would receive many letters in one day. This went on for about a month. I really thought, and still think, that the letter carrier had gone to the beach.

[cliftonjan]

Generally speaking I haven´t had many problems but the correos do seem to insist on posting my bank statements to a flat about a mile down the same street ! Luckily we know each other now but one time he returned a statement to the bank and my account was frozen as they thought I had moved without telling them!

The second little niggle was last week when I received 2 important work-related packages posted from London 6 months ago!

The staff in the correos are really helpful though and even let me go to the sorting area to try to find a package that they had put a collection slip through my door for but couldn´t find when I went to collect it!

[acmench]

I agree that in Madrid, at least, the mail service is pretty reliable. However, I do think it's more expensive that in the States. Shipping packages internationally, for example, can cost an arm and a leg. When I have sent packages by surface (boat) to the States a normal paper-box cost almost 100euros. By contrast, shipping a similar box THIS way cost only about $60.

[Pepino]

I'm still waiting for two mini parcels to arrive from England for my birthday.... which was 4 weeks ago! :(

[ribeirasacra]

We have a lot sent from Europe and found the postal service very good. Here in Galicia we have found that if the letter/package has a non Spanish stamp on it then it is delivered on a Saturday!
Post times can vary, the quickest is 2 days from Poland but the usual time is 4 days, which is fast enough for us.

[greytop]

I'm still waiting for two mini parcels to arrive from England for my birthday.... which was 4 weeks ago! :(Oh you're so gullible - they really only posted them yesterday ;D;D;D

[Culebronchris]

Good one Greytop. Every time I forget someone's birthday I just blame Correos!

Another oddity is that delivery times depend on the post box that you use to post the mail. The ones actually in the Correos office are fine but village boxes are only emptied once every blue moon and even in towns some of the boxes are more reliable than others

[allan]

[quote=Damian Corrigan;18711]I've been told that I've been quite unlucky, but I've had two important things go missing in Spain, and I'd call myself a light user of the postal service.

In the first place I lived in, the postman would often leave packages on top of the mail box rather than give them a note to collect it from the post office.

I sent a letter to Japan and a letter to the UK last week and the letter to Japan arrived first. :S

Make sure you have your name on your mail box. I don't know if its Spanish paranoia, but I've been told there is a risk they will return the letter undelivered if your name isn't on there.


As someone else mentioned, it seems to depend on where you live (pretty
much like the UK and other countries I guess). In this part of Southern Spain we've had no problems with post at all. When we moved in I put our names on the buzon, but since the house faces east the sun in the summer wasted no time in bleaching them out. We still get our post.
On the other hand we're the only foreigners living in the street and
so our names stand out.

Allan

[MrMark]

Yes, it used to be the case that the British postal system was very good. Unfortunately industrial relations appeared to have deteriorated a lot (whether this is bad management or bolshie unions, I'm not quite sure) and there've been a lot of strikes lately. Here in Blighty the post is typically taking up to 2 weeks to arrive. So if you're expecting a package in Barcelona or elsewhere in Spain from the UK don't expect a speedy service!