Does anyone have any experience of using one of the forwarding companies to purchase a Zwift Play and have it delivered to a country to which Zwift does not ship?
A Google search brings up a few of them and I’m sure they all have their own fine print and terms and conditions. I thought I’d ask here if anyone has already done it before diving in.
Thanks.
Hi @Keith_Leng
I don’t have any experience with forwarding shipping, so I can’t answer that question. I do however want to make a quick note. If you do end up forwarding the Zwift Play, or any other equipment, we aren’t able to honor the warranty on the item as we aren’t able to ship any replacement pieces. I just wanted to make sure that you take that into consideration before you move ahead.
Couldn’t you ship warranty replacements to the same forwarding service as the original shipment?
The usual option: https://www.myus.com/
Yes, I think that should work. https://www.myus.com/ was the first one that came up in my Google search. I guess I’ll go with them.
Hi Terry,
Interesting that you bring this up now since I had a member of the Zwift support team tell me that I should find someone in the US to buy one and send it to me (which I did) or have one mailed to a PO Box near the border and cross to pick it up. Now you’re indicating that I’m not eligible for any warranty resolutions because I did what someone from Zwift said I should do?
I know this isn’t your call, but the lack of shipping options to most of the world, in particular Canada, is absolute garbage. The amount of cross-border shipping that happens between Canada and the US on a daily basis is staggering, and I refuse to believe this is anything other than a “we just don’t want to do it” option. Zwift used to ship to Canada and stopped during the height of the supply chain issues during the pandemic. I understood it at the time, but any issues surrounding that challenge have long since been resolved.
By having this policy, Zwift is telling those of us who don’t live in the US, UK or EU that we’re essentially second class customers, despite paying the exact same fees as the other users do.
Their shipping policy is bizarre. All they have to do is give the item to FedEx and it can be shipped anywhere in the world.
Have they ever given any reason for their current policy?
From Canadian Zwift Shop Closure [July 20 2021]
This is the reason they gave for the Canada shop closure, so can’t speak for the ROTW.
It’s not really that easy as shipping costs, brokerage fees, import duties and taxes all have to be factored in and they’re probably not doing the volume needed to negotiate lower rates with any of the major carriers. Plus those costs can double/triple if they have to pay to have a warranty unit returned and a replacement shipped back out.
People ordering goods from the West for delivery to the East are accustomed to having to pay import duties and taxes. Most companies make it clear that the purchaser is responsible for the fees and the company cannot say in advance what those fees might be. They usually just hand the goods to FedEx and let them get on with it.
The honorable exception is Amazon.com. They tell you up front what the import fees will be. Why Zwift can’t sell through Amazon, I really can’t understand.
Returns and repairs may be an issue with big items such as trainers, but even there Wahoo, Garmin, et al seem to have no problem selling their trainers through Amazon.
Hopefully, things might improve with the new relationship between Zwift and Wahoo.
Possibly due to a low margin on the product. Amazon mandates that sellers do not sell for less when dealing direct compared to selling via Amazon, but they of course still take a cut, so it can require raising prices for all.
Whatever their reason, it’s difficult to fathom how any company in 2024 is unable to find a way to ship a simple plastic electronic gadget overseas.
I’m hopeful now that Wahoo have virtual shifting, they’ll pick this up and get things moving.
That’s the “poor customer experience” Zwift was probably talking about above. People don’t like surprises when something shows up at their door.
These brands also have global distribution partners to handle logistics, returns, etc.
If Zwift had a much larger product offering then a lot of this would make sense but they don’t and it’s just not cost effective.
I can only speak for myself but being told “We will not sell this to you unless you live in America or Europe” is a much worse customer experience than being told, “We will sell it to you but you must be responsible for any import duties and we are not able to tell you what they are.”. The latter is an experience I’m used to and it gives me a choice. Selling it through Amazon would be better still.
I guess none of us knows the figures so we can’t say what the costs are. Personally, I really can’t see why they’re unable to sell something like Zwift Play outside of the US and Europe.
Anyway, it’s no good me complaining on here. I’ll wait a while to see what Wahoo do, and if it’s still no go, I’ll use a forwarding company.
To be clear, I agree with you that they should be selling these outside the US.
That said–you know what Amazon reviews are like, right? You’d absolutely prefer to have the item than not have it. But if they sold it overseas, and the shipping costs were super high, we also know what kind of reviews they would be getting. “Device okay but shipping WAY TOO HIGH! 1 Star” 
Because the person who buys it and pays the high shipping, even knowing the costs in advance, won’t be thinking “the alternative is not having it”. They’ll be thinking “the alternative should be lower cost shipping”.
So again I agree with you, they should get this sorted out. But it’s very plausible that selling overseas while the shipping is high would tank their ‘star rating’ reviews. And, while I kinda hate it about the global economy, star rating reviews are important, right?
Below is typical of what people overseas see when ordering through Amazon. For small items shipping is often not that great, in fact in this case it’s free. The import fees, on the other hand, add almost 40% to the price. It’s crystal clear where the charges are going.
Surprisingly enough, even with fees like that, it’s often cheaper to buy from Amazon than to buy locally. People who live overseas and buy from amazon.com are used to this. They’re not likely to be thrown by it at all. In fact, it’s a good reason to buy from Amazon - you know exactly what the fees are going to be when you click “buy”.
And if Zwift Play were available on amazon.com, the vast majority of sales would be to the US so even if there were disgruntled foreign buyers they would make very little difference to the overall rating.
Those are good points–it’s possible the 1 star reviews I see about shipping are from domestic purchasers who are upset about having to pay shipping at all 
Maybe it’s my biases–if it were me, I’d always be hesitant to have part of my reviews based on things that are outside of my hands, like another company handling the shipping, warehousing, etc. But that’s also why I’m not running a company-slash-global-supply-chain