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.

We recently migrated our Shopify Plus store from Global-e to Zonos, and it was one of the best operational decisions we've made for our international business.

The onboarding team, especially Lennon and Nate, were exceptional. They guided us through the migration, helped us implement a VAT-inclusive checkout, and remained responsive throughout the entire process. As our requirements evolved, they adapted quickly and even delivered custom solutions where needed.

We've now processed a significant number of live international orders across multiple countries, and the customer experience has been excellent. Landed cost calculations are transparent, the DHL integration has worked well, and we finally have complete visibility into our international shipping costs.

One of the biggest advantages has been taking ownership of our international shipping stack. Having our own DHL account gives us full visibility into transportation costs, allows us to negotiate directly with the carrier as our volume grows, and gives us much greater control over our international business instead of relying on a closed ecosystem.

Every question we've had has been answered quickly, and the support team has been willing to work through real-world operational scenarios as they came up.

If you're currently using Global-e or evaluating international checkout solutions, I highly recommend taking a serious look at Zonos. Owning your international operation instead of outsourcing it has been a major advantage for our business.