Posted by Curious on February 15, 2001 at 23:42:45:
In Reply to: Sending clothes posted by Jarocho on February 15, 2001 at 16:09:53:
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In my experience you have two main ways to get "things" to her: FedEx and the bus. FedEx will ship from the U.S., and in my experience is the ONLY really dependable way to get things to someone in Mexico. It is expensive, however, and is best for small items. If you have a way of contacting her - a phone number, for example - you can call her and she can pick it up at the local FedEx office. This has worked well for me. A small package will run around $30-40. If you are willing to take the items into Mexico yourself, you can ship a box at the bus station. This has worked well for items like clothes, but works best if the person knows they are coming and picks them up soon after the bus arrives. The bus service is cheap, but does NOT deliver to a house - only to the bus station. As for transferring money: You can send money via Western Union, the U.S. Post Office, or deposit it directly to her account. If she tells you her bank, account number, whether the account is in dollars or pesos, and correct name the account is in (just to be safe), you can go to a branch of that bank in TJ and make a deposit to her account. Keep it under $10,000 per deposit to avoid any questions. (It is illegal to take more than $10,000 into Mexico without declaring it and filling out a LOT of paper work). This method also gets you the current bank exchange rate, or whatever rate you can get at the money changers. The U.S. Post Office offers a terrible rate, BTW. Another way is to send her your ATM card. Tell your bank that yours isn't scanning correctly, and ask them to please send you a replacement. It will be a duplicate of yours. Send one to her via FedEx. To do this you either need to trust her a lot, or set up an account just for this purpose. This is, in my opinion, the absolute best way to transfer money to Mexico. It not only gets a great exchange rate, but she can get up to the limit of the card for a minimal processing fee (Wells Fargo charges $2 per transaction). Not that I have ever DONE any of this, of course...
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