Is there a simple way to send a (large-ish) package from Portugal to non-EU countries such as the USA?
While visiting Portugal, I planned to send myself (in the USA) some of my purchases and gifts, but this was more difficult than I expected.
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It was hard to find a shipping box larger than a bubble mailer. I only found them at the CTT post office, and I had to wait in (long) line to purchase them. Is there a better place to get them?
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I expected I’d need customs forms to ship my packages but there were no such forms available at the CTT office. For my first package, the postal clerk filled it out for me, but it took a long time to do so. I don’t mind the wait myself, but it held up the line for some time.
When I decided to send another package later, I tried to do it online as the clerk suggested, but the ‘EN’ portion of the site seems to be only for stockholder reports (https://www.ctt.pt/grupo-ctt/). Using the Portuguese version, I got most of the way there, but got hung up on error messages that I took to mean “you need to enter more information about the contents of the package”. My best guess is that it wanted the item weight to exactly equal the parcel weight, but this doesn’t make sense as the box itself was a substantial portion of the weight in this case. So I ended up taking it to the CTT office again, where the (different) clerk filled it out for me, this time with a lot of sighing and grumbling.
I also tried the CTT app, but got stuck there as well.
Does anyone have any tips on how to do this more conveniently?
I ended up paying about 80€ for the first package (~6kg) and 50€ for the second one (~2kg I think). I did surface mail since I was just shipping them to myself and not in any hurry, but I hope they actually arrive! 