Per TheTwistgibber (Framework Staff) via Discord
Hello friends. As the conversation has shifted a bit from freight forwarding (as we’ve been shutting those down) to the legitimate question of why we aren’t just focusing on setting up international entities to streamline the EU restrictions that require significant overhead to enter new countries officially, here’s a bit of education for those that might not be in the know.
There’s a significant misunderstanding of how international operations work and what it takes to maintain multiple global entities for a company of less than 50 employees, all working remotely. While we absolutely understand everyone wants us to be everything, everywhere, all at once, we’re being compared to multi-billion dollar international behemoths as far as international presence, and even those companies aren’t everywhere, even to this day.
As a United States company operating internationally with offices in United States and Taiwan (Taiwan as our international shipping partner is there along with manufacturing), we are bound by different rules than EU-based businesses that wish to sell/ship their product throughout EU Member States.
Until we are at a scale with the appropriate finances, resources, and streamlined governmental authority to operate without what can only be described as crushing overhead, this can’t happen.
Please note that Framework does not support freight forwarding to unsupported countries as they do not have the authority to sell or ship their products to any countries/regions outside of their officially supported country/region list located here: What countries and regions do you ship to?. If individuals proceed by entering invalid/incorrect billing information, their order will be subject to cancellation/refund, and their payment method may be subject to blacklist. If the order does proceed, they are acknowledging that Framework is not responsible for anything that may happen as a result of not utilizing Framework’s direct shipping to a supported country/region, and that they are fully accountable for any additional costs incurred, or documentation required. Additional information can be found in the Framework Terms of Sale and the Framework Limited Warranty documentation.
Using a friend or family member (with a legitimate residential or commercial address, not a freight forwarding company) in a supported region to purchase a Framework is not freight forwarding because Framework defines Freight Forwarding as using a business to handle logistics, paperwork, import, etc. However, if you have to enter inaccurate billing to pay for it because you can’t select your country in the dropdowns during the checkout process, you are subject to order cancellation and payment blacklist for doing so.
Your designated person in a supported region, and their address, would be considered the owner of the device by Framework support. In addition to getting the device to you in the first place, they would need to handle reverse logistics if you needed to return a part (you would send the part to your designated person, who could then use Framework’s prepaid label to send it back to Framework), and they would need to receive any replacement parts and be responsible for getting them to you as well. Overall really not recommended or supported.
Please keep in mind that any discussion of getting around these restrictions would not be permitted.
We all wish that Framework could be everywhere globally, but that is not possible at this time for the reasons expressed above. If and when Framework does expand to Sweden in the future, I hope you’ll consider a purchase at that time.
