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It is cheaper to fly to US than buy Adobe software in Australia

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Re: It is cheaper to fly to US than buy Adobe software in Australia

#101

Post by megablast »

Aissen wrote: post #95

Nothing new here. An article from 2008: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1048488/adobe-cs4-p... TLDR; it was cheaper to fly to NYC from London, buy the suite there, then go back, than it was to just buy it in the UK.

When I was living in the UK in 2005, it was cheaper to fly to new york and buy a IBM Thinkpad Laptop, than it was to buy one in the UK. The US price in dollars was the same as the UK price in pounds, even thought $2=£1. And the return flight to new york was only £200. Buy two, and you could make a nice little profit.

Re: It is cheaper to fly to US than buy Adobe software in Australia

#102

Post by crosvenir »

Radim wrote: post #69
Wingman4l7 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because it's particularly insulting to the intelligence, especially when your customers are computer savvy people who know just how arbitrary region-based pricing of digital goods is?

Exploiting human irrationality and stupidity is one of the most venerable, time-proven ways of making money. If you feel your intelligence insulted, then don't buy it...? (aka, vote with your wallet, and let others do the same)

I'm not saying it's without merit, but my blood pressure raises a little every time I hear this argument. It comes across as, "STFU and don't buy if you don't want it!"

When in reality, the original consumer considered this but would rather pursue a more active response than to sulkily and more important silently use something else.

Yes "voting with one's wallet" is certainly an option. But it should not be the sole option as you seem to suggest.

Re: It is cheaper to fly to US than buy Adobe software in Australia

#104

Post by obiterdictum »

rmc wrote: post #55
Nursie wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia is extremely expensive for a lot of stuff. Europe is too, but less so (having lived in both). Part of this is that the AUD has appreciated in value so much over the last few years, and retailers are just not willing to drop their prices in line with the new purchasing power of the dollar. They also haven't caught up with the modern world in a lot of ways, considering that they still have a captive audience…

Part of this is that the AUD has appreciated in value so much over the last few years Yep, many other countries have had economic downturns lately, a lot of australian economy is based off mining, which is going OK. Ergo, currency appreciates. Part of the problem is retail rental rates are so high DANGER WILL ROBINSON! That's partially a sign that the property market is in a bubble or inflated. Many other countries h…

Property bubble has been predicted in Australia for years now. I was waiting for a market crash for years too, but now I'm not entirely convinced. With high urban sprawl, poor transport options, growing population and generally high income, I'm not surprised property costs as much as it does now.

Re: It is cheaper to fly to US than buy Adobe software in Australia

#106

Post by belorn »

Tloewald wrote: post #86
mattmanser wrote: post #75

What I never get about this and the differences in pricing in movies, music, books, branded clothes, etc. is that this is all tacitly approved by all the governments. That Nike or Adobe or whomever can stop people from buying it cheaper in one country and then selling it at a profit in another country is frankly bizarre. But then they'll throw a fit at each other if one country says 'no, you can't sell you're cheap b…

The government doesn't have much to do with it, it's all contract law. Adobe makes a deal with a local distributor -- we won't sell directly into your territory, we will label our goods so you can discriminate (e.g. not provide service or upgrades for "grey market" products). The real scandal is that the sftware (or hardware) company sells its products at a wholesale price to the local distributor that prices in supp…

Its the government that gives out copyright protections. It is the state that grant monopoly power to Adobe. The Australian government could have any rules, laws and consumer protection in place in return for this granted monopoly, and thus limit how companies like Adobe abuses this granted monopoly in Australia.

Re: It is cheaper to fly to US than buy Adobe software in Australia

#107

Post by alecthomas »

DanBC wrote: post #81
WhaleBiologist wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time, the Australian dollar was worth about 50 US cents, so things in Australia cost about double what it cost in the US. Then the Australian economy started booming, and now the AUD is stronger than the USD. But everyone who sells stuff in Australia thought "wait a minute, these guys are used to paying double, so what incentive do we have to change?". So now you have retarded pricing, like some places ex…

> Unless Australian retailers change their tactics, they will slowly go out of business, because an entire generation of computer literate people realize you can get 2-3x more out of your money just by buying from online stores. Buying online from overseas only works until the government put in place laws to prevent circumvention of technical rights protection measures. Like the DMCA in the US, or " European Directiv…

Australian law explicitly allows for consumers to circumvent region locking. Of course, this doesn't mean this can't change, but at least there's explicit precedent allowing it.

Quote from the Attorney General's department:

“An access control TPM specifically excludes TPMs which control geographic market segmentation. This means that consumers will be able to circumvent the region coding TPMs on legitimate DVDs purchased overseas. It also allows for the continued availability of region-free DVD players.”

TPM is a term from the US/Australian Free-Trade Agreement.

More information: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/blogs/gadgets-o...

Re: It is cheaper to fly to US than buy Adobe software in Australia

#108

Post by wtvanhest »

damian2000 wrote: post #100
PeterisP wrote: post #91

It's all the fault of Aussies themselves - if they want to fix this, they simply need to ensure (through their lawmakers) that the first sale doctrine applies fairly as intended, and within a week there will be redistributors selling legal boxed Adobe software (imported from US) for decent prices. It wouldn't be equal to USA prices, since VAT and some markup would apply, but if there is any competition whatsoever, th…

There's nothing stopping anyone from ordering from the US (eg. on amazon), apart from the extra GST (10%) added on top by aussie customs. On Amazon its only $2166 + 10% GST http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-65167117-CS6-Master-Collection/d... In fact you can get the software locally for as low as $3550 if you shop around - http://www.softwaresite.com.au/adobe-software-/69-adobe-cs6-... The main issue is the RRP (recommende…

"Ripped off" is really the wrong term for the pricing discrepancy created by having different places to buy the software within one market. The better term is "price discrimination".

Business users of everything are less price sensitive so intelligent sellers of services, software, hardware etc. attempt to capitalize on them through price discrimination.

In this case, Adobe (or distributors) are aware that businesses would rather not have someone shopping around for software when they could be doing something else more productive so they would pay more. The seller is able to capture the surplus. This is a good article that at least early on focuses on inconvenience as the mechanism for price discrimination: https://www.rca.org/page.aspx?pid=2995

Because of the comment before your's, I am not sure whether Adobe is using price discrimination against Australian customers but pharmaceutical companies do price discriminate based on geographic location. (There is also a mention of this in the article above).

Effective price discrimination is a way to extract the correct price from various customers and ignores costs.

If a customer nets value by purchasing a product, the product is priced fairly to them. Different users of the same product get different values, so every seller should try to figure out a way to get price as close to the value gained for each purchase for each customer.

The effect of price discrimination is higher profits for the seller, but it also spreads the cost of R&D more fairly based on value received by buyers. Theoretically PD should drive increased innovation long term.

Re: It is cheaper to fly to US than buy Adobe software in Australia

#109

Post by ocirion »

This reminds me of a story[1] around 8 years ago of the eye-watering costs of ADSL in South Africa. Whereby it was cheaper to fly to Hong Kong and download 100GB of data in an internet cafe than it was from home using the incumbent telco provider, Telkom.

[1] http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/cheaper-to-fly-than-u...

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