The Moto 360 is here. Well, it’s there – if by “there” you mean “the US”. If you can’t wait any longer for the it to arrive in Australia later this year, then you’re probably going to be looking to import your Moto 360 from the US.
Motorola’s hot new smartwatch goes on sale in the US at around 2.00am AEST from Motorola.com. It’ll also be available from Google Play and Best Buy’s website in the US, but they’re not much use to us – it can be a pain to access the US Google Play site, and Best Buy won’t ship outside the US nor ship to a known forwarder. Motorola’s website is probably going to be your best bet.
Earlier tonight, the guys at Android Police posted some links that allowed people to purchase the Moto 360 ahead of the official launch, with either the Grey leather band or the Black band available by fiddling some strings in the URLs, but that appears to now be fixed, with the site advising the stock is not available right at the end of the ordering process.
When the Moto 360 becomes available in the early hours of the morning, you should be able to log in to Motorola’s site using either a Guest account or your Google+ credentials, then place an order for delivery to a shipping forwarder.
Ausdroid’s had experience with two US-based shipping forwarders – ShipItTo and ComGateway. You’ll want to make sure you’ve got your account ready to go before you start submitting your order at Motorola’s website.
ShipItTo
To start with, ShipItTo has a purchasing option, so they’ll purchase your Moto 360 themselves and ship it to you. That service costs extra, though – US $8.50 per batch of ten items, plus 4.3% to cover fees on PayPal & credit cards, and 8% commission on the purchase cost.
If you just want to send a Moto 360 you purchased yourself from Motorola.com, then you can just use their forwarding service. ShipItTo offers a one-off service to send a package with a $1 processing fee and you simply pay the shipping – they kindly supply a Shipping Calculator to estimate that cost for you. They’ll ship via standard post, FedEx and DHL.
ComGateway
The other option is ComGateway, who offer a service with no per-package premium. They simply advise you of the cost of re-packaging the device before shipping it to you, if required.
ComGateway does require you to sign up before allowing you to access their LiveQuote service – only available during business hours in the US – which will advise you of the costs of shipping the Moto 360 to you. If you attempt to use the LiveQuote service outside of business hours the quote will be emailed to you on the next business day.
There’s a shipping calculator, you can check out once logged in as well.
The total price – including delivery to your US forwarder and delivery on to your Australian address – will probably be somewhere between $300 – $350 when you take currency conversions rates and shipping into account.
Arrival date at your US address is listed as 10 September (although this might slip if you order later), so you could have it here in Australia by mid-to-late September depending on your shipping method.
It’s possible that Motorola might cancel orders shipping to popular US freight forwarders, as Best Buy does. If this happens, you might be out of luck unless you can find a forwarder that isn’t blacklisted. Keep your wits about you.
Finally, if you do a group buy with friends you’ll probably save by splitting your shipping costs – you should be careful not to order more than AU $1000 of goods though, or you’ll have to pay customs duty and taxes. That probably means a maximum of 3 Moto 360’s per order.
It’s going to be an early morning for some of us here in Australia, with a few members of the Ausdroid team ready to put down money for a Moto 360.
Will you be checking out Motorola.com in the wee hours of the morning? What’s your preferred shipping method? Got another plan? Tell us in the comments!
