Jason Williams 
From Amazon To Your Door
You heard right! Items can be bought from Amazon and arrive at your door in Jamaica. Jamaicans have long complained about the ‘hidden courier fees’, ‘packages being misplaced’, and ‘poor customer service’ locally.
There’s also the issue of not knowing the product’s final clearing cost. Shopping straight from Amazon fixes all these issues.
This article walks you through the entire process and adds additional information. I won’t go over certain details about shopping on Amazon, as this article is geared mainly towards people who use Amazon with local couriers.
Purchasing The Item
Go to Amazon and Select Your Address.
Under ‘or ship outside the US’ select Choose, then pick Jamaica.
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You should see the message below. Amazon will show you items that ship to Jamaica. You can select Dismiss.
Search for your item and select it.
Select Buy Now.
If you don’t already have your Jamaican Address on Amazon, youwill need to add it. Set your Jamaican Address as the Delivery Address.
The next step is to add your ID. When you click the dropdown, you will see two options: TRN and Passport. What they really want is an ID with your TRN on it, for example, your Driver’s License.
I chose Passport as my ID. You need to upload your passport in JPG format. One Option is uploading your passport to Canva and downloading your file in JPG format.
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Select Your Delivery Date and Select ‘Place your order in JMD’.
Congratulations on completing your purchase!
Package Delivered
My order was placed on January 25th, and the estimated delivery date was February 9. I received an email from DHL on January 29th showing an estimated delivery date of February 2nd.
On February 2nd, I received emails from Amazon and DHL stating that my package was ‘Out For Delivery’ and ‘Your Delivery Is Today’, respectively.
I got a call in the afternoon from the delivery driver, who said he was in my community. He arrived at my gate, I collected the package, then he left. About 30 minutes later, I got an email from DHL confirming the delivery.
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Closing Thoughts
The entire process from order to delivery took 1 week and 2 days. This was easily the fastest delivery I’ve ever experienced. It’s also good to note that Amazon labelled the package as delivered(though no package delivered email was received from them). I’m sharing this purely for visibility; it didn’t bother me, but others might want to know.
It seems that DHL expects you to be home, as they only call when at or close to your address. A heads-up would have been good because what if I decided to leave home? The driver was uniformed and drove a DHL-branded Hyundai Staria, making him easy to identify.
The shipping cost isn’t much more expensive than that of many local couriers. A major benefit here is knowing the exact final cost before buying the item. Many Jamaicans lament purchasing an item online only to be shocked when the local courier quotes a high clearance cost.
The other major benefit is free international returns. Free returns are only offered by a few couriers locally. This process would be initiated on Amazon.
Note Well: A Twitter user recently claimed that you can return all packages to Amazon (ones cleared by local couriers) for free. Check out the tweet here. The first time I heard about Amazon Direct Shipping to Jamaica was about 2 years ago. You can check out the Silicon Caribe article here.
Amazon currently has a promotion where eligible orders over $35 USD get free international shipping.
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