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Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

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Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#91
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 worst in Poland: $3278.17 (10499.00 pln in which 1973 is VAT).

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#93
post #39
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

No, he's saying what he's saying. A $1300 Macbook costs £1,000 here in the UK which is roughly 30% more expensive than a direct currency conversion would have you expect. If you take that $1300 Macbook, add 30% and convert that to Euros it just happens to be that it works out at about €1300 which is what they charge in Germany. Someone posted about that here earlier. Most of that 30% is due to VAT at around 20% for m…

You forgot, that all US prices are missing the sales tax. So, you are comparing US prices without tax with your countries price including tax.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#94
post #88
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he's saying what he's saying. A $1300 Macbook costs £1,000 here in the UK which is roughly 30% more expensive than a direct currency conversion would have you expect. If you take that $1300 Macbook, add 30% and convert that to Euros it just happens to be that it works out at about €1300 which is what they charge in Germany. Someone posted about that here earlier. Most of that 30% is due to VAT at around 20% for m…

When my sister went to a backpack trip.visiting lots of countries in Europe ( she visited England, Holland, and lots of countries.between.there and Croatia, Hungary, etc...) she was surprised.about how much everything was.cheaper than Brazil, government efficiency is always impressive, the more efficient your government is, the lower the prices compared to other countries,.nevermind.comparing to your own income ( ie:…

That sounds off. What kind of prices? Brazil has high import taxes, so stuff like iPhones will be much more expensive, but I frankly don't believe that "everything" is cheaper in the UK or Netherlands.

Numbeo corroborates this: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#95
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.

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).

That tells me, that there are at least 8 cities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_State...

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first thought was this as well - we tend to list prices inc VAT in Europe, but it's almost always without in the States, no?

> tend to list prices inc VAT in Europe I was under the impression it's a legal requirement to show the inc VAT price. (And, show it as the most-prominent price -- no trickery like showing exc VAT bold, and inc VAT in fine print.)

I thought that too and here in Germany I'm very certain that's the case if you are selling to individuals. However when looking at the sales pages of JetBrains[1] (a czech company) they do not include VAT even for the individual developers version (which is explicitly not available to companies) so it might be that only national law applies (EU is difficult ;) )

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/buy/choose_edition.jsp?license...

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#97
It’s funny this is mentioned because just today I found out that the conversion rates at Asos.com from pound to euro are off by 12%. They calculate the conversion dividing by 0.70 instead of 0.79. So basically everyone buying products with prices based in euro is been ripped-off.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No import taxes on laptops or cell phones in the EU.

My hypothesis has always been that Apple charges the whole country-wide infrastructure (retail, marketing, etc.) on products, while in US (where it would be harder/impossible to split nation-wide efforts from world-wide efforts) this is not being done.

This also accounts for different prices in different European countries; e.g.: the cost of making business is very high in Italy (high salary taxes, high network costs, impossible to fire/sack people, etc.) so they make their products cost more in Italy to account for the additional costs of running operations there.

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#99
post #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-... !

It's OpenStack Swift under the hood, except that authentication is a bit weird (although properly documented).

I'm using this wrapper: https://github.com/puzzle1536/hubic-wrapper-to-swift

Re: Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

#100
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…

Do not buy GSM stuff blindly in the US, some phones might not be used in some countries. The iPhones have different part numbers and different frequency ranges depending on the country.

Along the same lines, some high power radio devices in the US would be illegal in Europe because they're in the wrong band. XBee radios are happy at 900MHz in the US, however this is GSM band in most of Europe and we use 863MHz for sub GHz radio instead. And almost vice versa, US GSM is 850MHz I believe.

It's a real pain for electronics work because you can't buy off the shelf things from the big hobbyist stores.

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