Have you ever wondered how you communicate with companies, hospitals and authorities?
In Switzerland, many things are still done via a phone call, sometimes there is an online form and then confirmation by e-mail. All these options would also exist here, at least in theory. Because in South America there is only one means of communication that really works. It is used for everything, whether police, hospital, airline, tours or spare parts. That’s WhatsApp!
Travelling here without WhatsApp makes life really complicated. You can write an email (if you find the address), but you rarely get a reply. You can also call, but it’s usually always busy or you don’t get through to the right person anyway. For example, Toyota Peru gave me the number of the nearest Toyota garage. I tried to call them 20 times. Not once did it work.
If you want to enquire with the airline or rebook a flight: only via WhatsApp. There are no other contact options. At least here in the south.
A police report, an insurance and a border crossing
Even the police want a WhatsApp number. When we had an accident, we reported it to the police and the contact details included a WhatsApp number instead of a phone number. Or if you want to know what the security situation is like, you can send the tourist police a WhatsApp with the region you want to know something about and you’ll get a quick and uncomplicated reply.
Michael also got the import permit for the car in Peru via WhatsApp. Well, not quite, it was initially supposed to come by email, but that didn’t work out. Fortunately, you have to confirm receipt. When no confirmation came, they wrote via WhatsApp and sent everything again via app. It’s just easier to type in a number correctly than to write an email address with a foreign name correctly.
Right at the border crossing in Ecuador, we had another experience: the computers at customs don’t work (they haven’t for months) and so customs can’t issue any papers. But that’s no problem, the local customs officers look at the papers, take a photo and send the whole thing to the head office via WhatsApp. There they issue the document and sent it back via chat, which is printed out by the customs officer. It works like a charm, just takes a few hours.
In Peru, you can even buy car insurance (SOAT) via WhatsApp. You write what you need, receive the conditions and a PayPal link. You use it to pay and then you receive the electronic copy via chat. The whole process takes less than 10 minutes.
Hard question: ‘How much does it cost?’
Now we’re looking for spare parts. This is also best done via the app. Write what you need, add a photo and wait for a reply. That way you always have everything in writing. If we want to do a particular tour, we usually ask the providers via WhatsApp.
But just because you send a message and get a reply doesn’t mean that the question has been answered. It’s sometimes tedious. Often the reply doesn’t answer anything and you have to ask the same question several times. The tour operators are the real specialists in this. We’ve been to the point that we stopped writing because, despite repeated specific enquiry, we never received a quote. ‘How much does it cost?’ seems to be a difficult question.
For many travellers, chatting is also an advantage, especially if you don’t speak Spanish, because you can translate everything and don’t have to react immediately as you would with a phone call. Making a phone call is more difficult.
And what about data protection? It’s not exactly a top priority here, whether it’s the authorities, hospitals, customs… It’s just too convenient to chat. Well, we have to live with that. WhatsApp will certainly be pleased that it is used so actively here 😅