Ramblings of an old Doc

 

The Australian Parliament has finally gotten off its duff and is probing the price gouging there.

This is getting ridiculous. It’s actually cheaper for an Australian to fly to the US and buy CS6 here than to buy it in Oz! Well, Adobe’s going 100% digital and dropping box sets, so that might well not be happening any more, but the Australian legislature is demanding answers. Good for them, and high time. This has been going on for decades.

Companies often charge a premium of more than 70% in Oz as compared to the US pricing:

Microsoft: Office Professional USA: $399, AU: $599… failed to justify the price difference. So what did Pip Marlowe (MS’s Oz managing directrix) say? “customers will vote with their wallets”. They probably would, except tat the alternatives are also inflated. She might have equally said, “Let them eat cake.”

Adobe’s Oz managing director Paul Robson couldn’t justify the nearly 75% higher price for boxed editions of CS6 but pointed out the more equally priced cloud edition. That’s just absurd, since Adobe is eliminating physical editions in the future: Maybe the news takes longer to get to Oz, too.

Apple’s Australian boss Tony King came out best of the three. He stated that hardware differs in price only after conversions and taxes are figured in. The higher prices for digital content resulted from higher prices for Australia resulted from higher contract prices from the record labels and studios setting higher prices for Australia over similar content for the USA.

One has to wonder if these things are carry overs from before the digital age, when all content was physical. If so, it’s high time that delivery method should determine price. It costs next to nothing to deliver these goods digitally. After all, wasn’t that the main selling point of the internet and the digital age?

Whether that’s true or not, it’s high time Australians get treated equally with respect to digital delivery, and that physical delivery prices come into line and be justified by fact, and not by “What the market can bear.” That proposition requires an alternative priced differently.

Perhaps the best alternative is using Open Office or Libre Office, and returning the thumb in the eye.

Source:

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-adobe-apple-poorly-justify-australian-price-gouging


Comments (Page 1)
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on Mar 23, 2013

  I agree, with digital delivery, physical location should not be much of a factor in pricing aside from taxes and currency exchange rates.

As for actually shipping things to OZ....well, it is all downhill from most of the world, isn't it? The boats should be able to coast most of the way there.

on Mar 23, 2013

Apple’s Australian boss Tony King came out best of the three. He stated that hardware differs in price only after conversions and taxes are figured in. The higher prices for digital content resulted from higher prices for Australia resulted from higher contract prices from the record labels and studios setting higher prices for Australia over similar content for the USA.

Good on you, Apple..... blaming the labels....for Apple's price gouging...

Bloody wankers couldn't lie straight in bed.

"conversions"?

Fucking conversions?

In my lifetime the $AUS has been anything from 45c USD to $1.06 USD ....and I see fuck-all difference in their 'conversions'....

on Mar 23, 2013

Just to be painfully clear....once upon a time the US might pay $100 for a ver of windows....and at 45c to the Aussie dollar we'd pay "the same".... about $220.

Now....the US pays $100 and we're still paying "the same" $220....

 

...except now that $220 is the equivalent of $240 USD .....and the US pays 100......

 

Digital download?   THERE IS NO 'extra cost'......the buyer pays for the "shipping" via his ADSL.

 

This isn't some cerebral economics bullshit....it's just plain common-or-garden BULLSHIT.

on Mar 23, 2013

At least Adobe was smart enough to say the extra cost was to provide marketing and a greater shopping 'experience', and apple try to justify the cost with production. This will give them an argument when the ACCC takes them to court.

When MS came up with, they can create a price they thought they could get out of a market, and if someone doesn't like it they don't have to buy it ... OMG, their lawyers must be having a heart attack.

They just gave the ACCC the smoking gun after they shot themselves in the foot. Talk about having no idea ...

 

on Mar 23, 2013

This isn't some cerebral economics bullshit....it's just plain common-or-garden BULLSHIT.

 

Exactly. I'm sick of their lies as well. You'd think the Oz legislators' staffers would have those stats for them in the case of such an 'answer' (aka bald faced lie).

 

 

 

on Mar 23, 2013

Steam US price for a random game: 50,00 $

 

Steam EU price for the same game: 50,00 €

 

50,00 € = 64,965 $

 

NEARLY 65 $ for the same game..... and dont tell me it cost more to distribute the stuff to Europe then to download it from the US.

 

That is an UNJUSTIFIED 30% price rise!

 

 

And this is even better:

 

Star Trek: EU price: 60,00 €.....

Star Trek: US price: 50,00 $....

 

WTF?

60,00 € = 77,898 $.

That is an OUTRAGEOUS 56% price rise!

 

 

Steam offers are not worth ANYTHING.

 

One should sue them for fraud until they are bankrupt.

 

I wont buy anything from them.

 

 


on Mar 23, 2013

I love how it's fraud when someone sticks a higher price tag on something and people pay it.  Be less commie, more capitalist.  You wouldn't be in this position to begin with.

 

You guys are the ones that said yes when they went and region locked everything so they could give poor countries a break and still give you the shaft.  Well, congratulations, price gouging on digital media is exactly what we've all got going on.

 

Australia is the only English speaking country of any size in Region 4.  It's populated by droves of South Americans, you have dick for competing markets.  If you didn't want this to happen, it was simple to prevent.  You just had to tell them to go fuck themselves when they came to you with their good little socialist plan to keep screwing you with a product that had never been competitively priced to begin with.

 

I get a real kick out of this every time it comes up.  I may have to watch the world collapse around me, but at least I get to be entertained by everyone screaming bloody murder over the few little things they've managed to notice long enough to complain about.

on Mar 23, 2013

Australia isn't populated by 'droves of South Americans".  Geez you can talk crap.

We 'guys' didn't say 'yes' to anything....it was thrust down our throats as a fait accompli.

And 'we all' don't have it going on.  If the pricing MATCHED the source's [the US] then there would be no 'gouging'.

Go 'get a real kick' somewhere else, troll.

on Mar 23, 2013

psychooak, you are full of politics (bullshit), there are far more AFGAN boatpeople than south americans in australia, and as jafo outlined the region locking was FORCED on us BY the US.

you have proved that your name is CORRECT ie psycho as in insane and as intelligent as a tree.

harpo

 

on Mar 23, 2013

Just to add...for the ignorant...the ACCC already decreed that Region Coding was anti-competitive and thus not enforceable...hence it is LEGAL to sell Region unlocked DVD recorders/players.

That was done years ago..... and is why much of the DVDs I buy come from the US and UK.  I get them here cheaper via airmail than can be purchased locally.

Most recent was for a friend....Beatles collection.....about $300 here.... online for 160.

on Mar 23, 2013

Psychoak was talking more about Region 4 than Australia, which doesn't have much to do with why the companies are in trouble... it has more to do with digital distribution

 

on Mar 23, 2013

Thanks for the extra entertainment.

 

Region 4 is South America.  Region 4 is where they stuck Australia.  Your region is populated by South Americans.  If I need to clarify further it will take some thinking, but I'm sure I can come up with something.

 

Jafo, are you not enjoying your precious copyright laws today?  You've said all kinds of things about anyone that subverts our precious copyright laws, what's so bad about a company making things that only play a particular vendors discs and then letting them charge you whatever they want?

 

Harpo, you added a letter.  I'm from Alaska.

 

Have fun blaming the US for your purchasing choices and support for copyright laws that let a company do anything they damn well please to the end consumer.

on Mar 24, 2013

Enjoy the entertainment...and the time-out.

This has exactly zero to do with copyright laws....never did, although it should be added Australia is currently in bed with the US version of them....although we once were with the English ver [obviously].

The issue with disparate pricing is simple DISCRIMINATION.

Imagine how much balls MS or Apple would need if their pricing policy was...."Oh, you're an 'African American'?  OK, then the price is 50% more....."

 

If that idea is abhorrent then perhaps outsiders can understand just how 'wrong' gouging actually is...

on Mar 24, 2013

Imagine how much balls MS or Apple would need if their pricing policy was...."Oh, you're an 'African American'? OK, then the price is 50% more....."

No different than saying "Oh, you're not a senior citizen?  Ok, then the price is 50% more..."

on Mar 24, 2013

Screw Apple and video games, etc. I am still trying to figure out how a drug can cost 7 times more in Oz than the U.S.A. And I have seen the reverse with EURO countries costing a fraction of what thew Americans have to pay for the same drug. When did saving lives, relieving suffering, and easing pain become the bastardized market ir is?

Nothing personal, but i could give a rats ass who pays what, where for software. Sometimes I think it's done to distract folks and have them confuse what's important.

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