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Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

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Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#71
post #17
post #12

> I guess we should thank apple for not allowing different pricing in different regions. Apple lets me pay 699 Euro ( http://store.apple.com/de/buy-iphone/iphone5s ) in Germany vs 649$ ( http://store.apple.com/us/buy-iphone/iphone5s ) in the US.

Just a reminder in this case: EU prices include the VAT (near 20% in many cases), while in the US the state tax (often 10%) is not included in public prices.

There is no state sales tax that is 10%. If you combine city, county, and state sales tax, you get 10% in just two cities in the entire United States (both in Alabama).

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#72
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).

With Apple's market it seems inconsistent. There are some iPhone apps that are $0.99/€0.99/£0.99 or $9.99/€9.99/£9.99, but also many that are $0.99/€0.89/£0.69 or $9.99/€8.99/£6.99. Not an exact conversion, but not just swapping out the signs either. I think the app author gets to choose which of those two pricing schemes they want.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#73
post #40
post #31

Even for cloud-based services like dropbox, the cost of doing business in all countries is not the same. There are different laws/regulations to deal with, costs for having foreign-language support people, costs for internationalizing parts of the UI/etc. Personally, I think it's kind of odd to expect that something will cost the exact same amount anywhere in the world. It might be that the added cost for dropbox to…

The problem isn't just paying more. I'm aware of how tax-heavy europe is, and how much harder it is to support the wide variety of languages and laws. In most cases, I would be fine paying a bit more for a service. The problem is the way the mark-up happens. They're not calculating the difference and marking that up, they're literally just equating US dollars with euros. $99 and €99 might sound similar, but the diffe…

Who is to say they didn't do a "proper calculation" and result in something close enough to €99 that they just rounded up/down to keep things consistent?

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#74
post #62
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can register in your home country for Netflix and the available shows will still be determined by your VPN's IP.

Yes, if you're in Germany your programming is for Germany whether or not you have a US or German account. The bad news is that you'll have to use a VPN to pretend to be from some other country (US) in order to get some of the shows not offered in your own country (Germany). The good news is that you can use a VPN to register for Netflix (and pay less!) and get the same content as you would get if you registered in Ge…

How can you see German programming in Netflix when it doesn't even exist yet in Germany? They're supposed to launch here in two weeks, but as far as I know nothing is available yet.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#75
post #38

If you are in Europe I recommend hubiC instead of Dropbox. They are much cheaper and have servers in Europe (France - they are child company of OVH). Dropbox only has servers in America [1], so its slower. - 25GB free - 100GB 1€/m - 10TB 10€/m Yes you read that right, its TEN TIMES the space of Dropbox Pro, for the same price. Im not affiliated or anything, just a satisfied customer. [1] - https://www.dropbox.com/hel…

No Linux client? No thanks.

Edit: My mistake https://forums.hubic.com/showthread.php?272-hubiC-for-Linux-...!

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#76
post #40
post #31

Even for cloud-based services like dropbox, the cost of doing business in all countries is not the same. There are different laws/regulations to deal with, costs for having foreign-language support people, costs for internationalizing parts of the UI/etc. Personally, I think it's kind of odd to expect that something will cost the exact same amount anywhere in the world. It might be that the added cost for dropbox to…

The problem isn't just paying more. I'm aware of how tax-heavy europe is, and how much harder it is to support the wide variety of languages and laws. In most cases, I would be fine paying a bit more for a service. The problem is the way the mark-up happens. They're not calculating the difference and marking that up, they're literally just equating US dollars with euros. $99 and €99 might sound similar, but the diffe…

No way? Sales tax in Denmark alone is 25% and then we haven't even begun talking about additional cost of running your business here.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#77
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a reminder in this case: EU prices include the VAT (near 20% in many cases), while in the US the state tax (often 10%) is not included in public prices.

Except 1 EUR = 1.31 USD right now, so even with a 19% VAT, the EUR value should be lower than USD: $649 + 19% VAT is 588€ not 699. 19% european surcharge on top of the VAT.

How about import taxes then? I can imagine Apple is a US company and thus pays either no or very little import tax when they get their shipments from the production facilities in China, but to get it to Europe costs more money. I can imagine. I know nothing.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#78
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't just paying more. I'm aware of how tax-heavy europe is, and how much harder it is to support the wide variety of languages and laws. In most cases, I would be fine paying a bit more for a service. The problem is the way the mark-up happens. They're not calculating the difference and marking that up, they're literally just equating US dollars with euros. $99 and €99 might sound similar, but the diffe…

Netflix and Spotify are the same. Spotify is £9.99 here in the UK, €9.99 in most of Western Europe and $9.99 in the US. Admittedly they have to deal with record labels so it's a bit different, but it's not really an excuse. Strangely Dropbox here is showing the price as $9.99.

In Poland Spotify costs ~20zł which is just a little bit under 7$. So not always it's so bad

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#79
post #38

If you are in Europe I recommend hubiC instead of Dropbox. They are much cheaper and have servers in Europe (France - they are child company of OVH). Dropbox only has servers in America [1], so its slower. - 25GB free - 100GB 1€/m - 10TB 10€/m Yes you read that right, its TEN TIMES the space of Dropbox Pro, for the same price. Im not affiliated or anything, just a satisfied customer. [1] - https://www.dropbox.com/hel…

Also, they don't hand your data over to the US government.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#80
post #31

Even for cloud-based services like dropbox, the cost of doing business in all countries is not the same. There are different laws/regulations to deal with, costs for having foreign-language support people, costs for internationalizing parts of the UI/etc. Personally, I think it's kind of odd to expect that something will cost the exact same amount anywhere in the world. It might be that the added cost for dropbox to…

Products are not priced by cost. They are priced at the highest point the market will tolerate. Moreover, a European employee is generally way cheaper than an American one, the corporate tax is often cheaper, if they were really driven by costs, they would simply have relocated (at least outside of Silicon Valley). The simple fact of operating from California means they don't care about operating costs.
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