Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

gist.github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 143 posts

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#21

Post by blowski »

kloktier wrote: post #9

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro vs. http://store.apple.com/de/buy-mac/macbook-pro Same concept. You can't have the price of good fluctuating all the time in Europe because the relationship between the dollar and euro have changed. They fix the price, it accounts for VAT and sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.

> the relationship between the dollar and euro have changed

The Euro has never gone below $1.17, and has averaged at around $1.32 since Dropbox launched in 2008.

> it accounts for VAT

Dropbox don't pay VAT in the EU. https://www.dropbox.com/help/971

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#22

Post by Kequc »

In general; a $2 cup of coffee in north america costs 2€ in Europe. A $300 Wii U in north america costs 300€ in Europe. The only time currency conversion matters is because you are converting between two currencies, when buying a product from another country.

GOG.com sells all their games in north american prices because it only has offices in north america. You are buying a product from north america when you buy from them. Dropbox, Steam, Nintendo, Sony all have offices in Europe. So you aren't buying a foreign product and you do not account for a currency conversion as there isn't one.

Taxes are an important consideration. For example if you buy a $500 cell phone from north america and have it shipped to Europe. You will pay less for the phone but when it crosses the border you pay considerable taxes such that the "deal" is no longer worth it.

If import taxes were applied to physical as well as digital goods, as they probably should be, you would actively want to buy from a European company within Europe. You currently do for most goods, because it actually saves you money.

It's the lag on charging tax for imported digital goods. Otherwise you are earning Euros you are spending Euros, there is no currency conversion.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#23

Post by rtpg »

jvandenbroeck wrote: post #6

Yeah I hate it when I have to pay more for a service as a European. It might seem silly but that's the reason I cancelled my Spotify account, I didn't want to pay a 'European' premium. I hate it when they check from which country your creditcard number is - Netflix is nice that they allow you to register in a different country with a VPN & don't check the credit card country.

Well VAT is usually levied on online services but sales tax isn't so it's normal for you to pay at least ~20% more.

The Internet doesn't make companies immune to taxes

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#24

Post by microtonal »

masklinn wrote: post #19
kloktier wrote: post #9

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro vs. http://store.apple.com/de/buy-mac/macbook-pro Same concept. You can't have the price of good fluctuating all the time in Europe because the relationship between the dollar and euro have changed. They fix the price, it accounts for VAT and sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.

> They fix the price, it accounts for VAT and sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. Never seen less, always seen more. Significantly more. Take the top-of-the-line MBP without options, 2500€ is $3286, the german VAT is 19%. So a VAT-including US price would be $2975. There's a 10% ($311) surcharge for living in Germany.

Even though this true with regards to Apple products in the EU, be aware that in Germany you also pay a copyright levy on computers:

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=5a3c6bfb-8d58-...

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#26

Post by klausa »

Kequc wrote: post #22

In general; a $2 cup of coffee in north america costs 2€ in Europe. A $300 Wii U in north america costs 300€ in Europe. The only time currency conversion matters is because you are converting between two currencies, when buying a product from another country. GOG.com sells all their games in north american prices because it only has offices in north america. You are buying a product from north america when you buy fr…

>GOG.com sells all their games in north american prices because it only has offices in north america.

They also price their stuff in EUR, have offices in Poland and the company is registered on Cyprus.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#27

Post by cyanbane »

alandarev wrote: post #14
kloktier wrote: post #9

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro vs. http://store.apple.com/de/buy-mac/macbook-pro Same concept. You can't have the price of good fluctuating all the time in Europe because the relationship between the dollar and euro have changed. They fix the price, it accounts for VAT and sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.

No its not. One does not include VAT, other does. In Dropbox example both include VAT. You can see this tendency clearly in digital games. When I worked with games pricing for MacOS, I asked why such a huge difference? Boss replied: "It is the easiest to force Europeans into premium costs". There is even a chrome extension which shows how much a game costs in different countries on Steam website: Buy Sid Meier's Civi…

One of the neat things about this is that it sometimes produces arbitrage that people leverage if the game does not have geo-restrictions built in. People will purchase in bulk and then trade.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#28

Post by nicky0 »

Kequc wrote: post #22

In general; a $2 cup of coffee in north america costs 2€ in Europe. A $300 Wii U in north america costs 300€ in Europe. The only time currency conversion matters is because you are converting between two currencies, when buying a product from another country. GOG.com sells all their games in north american prices because it only has offices in north america. You are buying a product from north america when you buy fr…

> A $300 Wii U in north america costs 300€ in Europe.

I don't get what you are saying. Do you think that the number will always be 300 everywhere. 300 Yen, 300 pounds?

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#29

Post by simonh »

kloktier wrote: post #9

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro vs. http://store.apple.com/de/buy-mac/macbook-pro Same concept. You can't have the price of good fluctuating all the time in Europe because the relationship between the dollar and euro have changed. They fix the price, it accounts for VAT and sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.

Usually a little more, so those Macbooks are actually about 10% more expensive than in the US once you account for VAT, but it's not unusual for the exchange rate to vary by up to 10% in any given 12 month period.

Most goods are typically more expensive in Europe than in the US for all kinds of structural reasons. Transport costs are higher, labor costs are higher, power and real estate costs are higher. It just costs more to do business over here. The first time I went to the states I was shocked at how cheap _everything_ seemed to be.

Post reply on HN