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Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

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Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#41

Post by masklinn »

Swizec wrote: post #35
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…

Yes, kind of, but not really. The problem right now is that €1 is worth $1.3. In Europe VAT is included and is about 20% in most countries (it does vary), in US it's not. So, a service that costs €1 in Europe, gets the provider €0.8, or $1.05. Import tax is generally the same as VAT as far as I know. Sales tax in the US is usually around 7% -> to a consumer, a $1 service costs $1.07. This means that if you import a $…

> Import tax is generally the same as VAT as far as I know.

There's no import tax on software, on services, on cell phones or on laptops. I could find no such thing on TARIC anyway. It does list consoles with 0% import tax.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#42

Post by simonbarker87 »

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.

I get what you mean but seeing as Spotify is a European company and launched in the US a long time after Euro launch it's more like a US discount.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#43

Post by gadders »

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…

And typically $300 converts to £300 which is even worse.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#44

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #18
virmundi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America doesn't have a VAT. Internet services seldom have any tax requirement at all. Laws vary, but the onus is on the customer to pay local and state taxes. There is federal sales tax at all.

My buddy that sold books online had to calculate our own state's sales tax (by county and city! yuck) because he has to report here. But if you were out of state he didn't charge the sales tax. Its a broken system, very weird.

Individual states can't tax interstate commerce, that's the job of the feds. Actually, they can if they have a presence in both states - they can only tax a business that has a physical presence in that state. It isn't broken, it is part of the [inferred] Constitution. The idea is to not place burdens on interstate commerce. Without it the states would be free to give their state preference in commerce - to tax commerce interstate at a high rate so nobody wants to engage in interstate commerce.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause

"The central rationale for the rule against discrimination is to prohibit state or municipal laws whose object is local economic protectionism, laws that would excite those jealousies and retaliatory measures the Constitution was designed to prevent"

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#45

Post by shawabawa3 »

dspillett wrote: post #34
alandarev wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For services like Spotify you do have to account for different delivery costs they may have in Europe. Bandwidth is more expensive over here (partly because it just is, and partly because in many places we are not as well served so it is a more contended resource) which they will have to factor in. There may be differing costs for payment processing too, and if they have any sort of tech support and documentation the…

> Bandwidth is more expensive over here

Do you have a source for that? According to this [1] Europe has by far the cheapest bandwidth in the world

  [1] http://blog.cloudflare.com/the-relative-cost-of-bandwidth-around-the-world

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#46

Post by masklinn »

microtonal wrote: post #24
masklinn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-...

The price is the same in the French store, it is even more expensive (2525€) in the Belgian, Dutch, Italian or Spanish stores.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#47

Post by aikah »

I call it the "Apple pricing",where 1$ == 1€ .Why do businesses do that ? I'm pretty sure they'd ajust their pricing if 1€I get that one needs to adjust with local regulations,the cost doing business,localisation,... but still 1$ != 1€. (a few years ago, 1€ ~= 1.50$ , so much that people just flew to USA to buy expensive Apple gear,and it was still cheaper than paying the € price).

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#48

Post by Swizec »

masklinn wrote: post #41
Swizec wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, kind of, but not really. The problem right now is that €1 is worth $1.3. In Europe VAT is included and is about 20% in most countries (it does vary), in US it's not. So, a service that costs €1 in Europe, gets the provider €0.8, or $1.05. Import tax is generally the same as VAT as far as I know. Sales tax in the US is usually around 7% -> to a consumer, a $1 service costs $1.07. This means that if you import a $…

> Import tax is generally the same as VAT as far as I know. There's no import tax on software, on services, on cell phones or on laptops. I could find no such thing on TARIC anyway. It does list consoles with 0% import tax.

Even better then, you get a full 13% discount for buying in USD when listed prices are same in USD and EUR.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#49

Post by Swizec »

aikah wrote: post #47

I call it the "Apple pricing",where 1$ == 1€ .Why do businesses do that ? I'm pretty sure they'd ajust their pricing if 1€ I get that one needs to adjust with local regulations,the cost doing business,localisation,... but still 1$ != 1€. (a few years ago, 1€ ~= 1.50$ , so much that people just flew to USA to buy expensive Apple gear,and it was still cheaper than paying the € price).

Or as is common now, at least one of your friends is always in the US and about to come home.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#50

Post by doodyhead »

aikah wrote: post #47

I call it the "Apple pricing",where 1$ == 1€ .Why do businesses do that ? I'm pretty sure they'd ajust their pricing if 1€ I get that one needs to adjust with local regulations,the cost doing business,localisation,... but still 1$ != 1€. (a few years ago, 1€ ~= 1.50$ , so much that people just flew to USA to buy expensive Apple gear,and it was still cheaper than paying the € price).

Part of it is definitely that US prices are often listed exclusive of tax, while EU prices are listed inclusive, which instantly adds 20-30%.

Granted, they still hike up the prices further in the EU and other markets, Australia being the most egregious example.

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