Zonos Duty and Tax

We have approximately a 20% error rate with packages shipped by Zonos and UPS Worldwide DDP. Over the past two months, three packages were sent back with no reason at all. I contacted support, and they said there was some kind of scanner error and I should just give the package back to UPS. I've done so, and two of the packages arrived safely. The last appears to be sitting in a UPS facility in California, not moving for four days. Worldwide DDP already takes 2-3 weeks to arrive, and if the package comes back to us and we have to wait four days to hear back from support - because they don't respond to emails promptly at all - it's taking more like 8 weeks for customers to get their packages. This is really frustrating for the customers, and then we're the ones who get the bad reviews, not Zonos or the carrier. Another package just got returned yesterday because "the address is incomplete. Attempts to obtain address information were unsuccessful." First, the address pops right up in Google Maps. It's fine. The customer has confirmed it. And second, neither us nor the customer heard anything about any issues with the address. They absolutely did not attempt to contact us before just pocketing our money and sending the package back. International shipments with Zonos make up about 2% of our total order volume, but about half of our shipping issues. We've contacted them and UPS multiple times and they say they'll look into it, but no one ever fixes the problem. As soon as our annual contract with Zonos runs out, we're cancelling and trying another option.

We've been working with Zonos now for several years. In the beginning it was helpful, we were able to customize the settings on our own and the bugs we had were often fixable ourselves. Today, Zonos has many issues. Since yesterday we have customers from outside of Europe that cannot check out anymore when using a discount code. The answer from Zonos? They are sending a standard AI answer after 12 hours without a fix, not even addressing the issues of the customers. The tool is very important for the function of the shop and having relevant bugs every few weeks/months like this is costing a lot of revenue.

I added this app so that my international customers weren't blindsided by taxes and duties upon receiving their packages, but I've had nothing but trouble with it. The support people who work for this company are awesome (hence the two stars instead of one), but unfortunately the app itself is terribly inaccurate. I worked with several of my international customers to ask them what their taxes were and they were absolutely never even close to what Zonos estimated for Landed Costs. They were always way higher than my customers had to pay. Additionally, simple things like adding UPS shipping was difficult because, again, the rates weren't even close to what I'd pay to ship via Shopify Shipping. I'm worried that the overestimations are scaring people away during the checkout process. I've just changed all of my shipping fees to say "You may be expected to pay taxes/duties upon receipt of your item." Problem solved and now I get to keep my $20/month plus whatever percent they were taking per international order.

There was a massive price increase and my previous review is therefore no longer valid. I am uninstalling Zonos.

'Been using it for a few months. Not really sure how the pricing goes. For Canadian shipment I often see a $13 advancement fee which I don't understand. Zonos replied to my inquiry it's a FedEx fee to advance pay the duties and taxes which makes no sense since those duties are paid by us up front or by customer on delivery. FedEx is unresponsive at this point. I have my doubts the app is valuable or not to my internal shipping operation.