Australian Govt Forces Apple, Adobe, Microsoft To Explain Price Hikes 371
An anonymous reader writes "Live outside the U.S.? Tired of paying huge local price markups on technology products from vendors such as Apple, Microsoft and Adobe? Well, rest easy, the Australian Government is on the case. After months of stonewalling from the vendors, today the Australian Parliament issued subpoenas compelling the three vendors to appear in public and take questions regarding their price hikes on technology products sold in Australia. Finally, we may have some answers for why Adobe, for example, charges up to $1,400 more for the full version of Creative Suite 6 when sold outside the U.S."
So obvious.. (Score:5, Funny)
Printing the instructions upside down costs money silly.
Re:So obvious.. (Score:5, Funny)
Got to localize the instructions. Rooting your computer means something entirely different. Electrocution hazard if the instructions got into the hands of a drunk bloke. What am I saying, they don't read instructions.
Translate this to legalese: (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why? Because fuck you. That's why."
Re:Translate this to legalese: (Score:5, Funny)
Please mod +5 informative. This is the actual answer.
Re:Translate this to legalese: (Score:5, Funny)
This is the actual answer.
No it isn't. The real reason is that Australia has a relatively small population, so the cost of translating all the documentation into Australian is spread across fewer customers.
Re:Translate this to legalese: (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll take that into account the first time i see 'colour' in a manual.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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I'll take that into account the first time i see 'colour' in a manual.
I wonder how you spell "whoosh" in Australian.
In Australia, the "whoosh" goes the other way [wikipedia.org]. No wonder it's expensive to localize everything!
Ratings cost money (Score:2)
The above is an obvious joke (Score:2)
Also ratings boards don't charge.
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But because it's also upside down you don't easily notice the difference.
Re:Ratings cost money (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.classification.gov.au/Industry/Journey/Pages/CGnonA/Step3.aspx [classification.gov.au]
Re:Ratings cost money (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't just have to pay to get the classification. They have to pay lawyers to do the paperwork, accountants to handle the financials, service and support to handle refunds and disputes, and so on (not to mention the managerial overheads). It wouldn't surprise me if these costs exceeded $1 million.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that the prices are always justified, and I'm sure that there is a big "because we can" factor as well. As an Australian, I too have been outraged on more than one occasion by the price that we have to pay for goods in comparison with the US. However, my day job (which admittedly involves hardware, not software) has given me an appreciation for the amount of actual effort required before you can start selling something in another country, and the company needs to recoup that cost somehow.
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Re:Translate this to legalese: (Score:5, Funny)
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Notwithstanding any prior arrangement, agreement, or contract, being made verbally or in written form between the Company and the Customer, wherein the Customer is an occupant of or visitor to the country or continent of the Region, the Company shall have the exclusive right to establish and define the level of compensation required for the limited release of exclusive rights to the copying of the Product, to the maximum extent allowed by law, for any reason or none whatsoever. By accessing the Service prov
Re:Translate this to legalese: (Score:5, Informative)
That'd be because the majority of pharmaceuticals are covered under the Pharmaceutical Benefit System, ie, subsidised by the government as part of free and universal health care. I'm sure that if the Australian government didn't do that, we'd get an especially large "fuck you" from the pharma companies as well.
As far as media goes, I'm hopeful that something might come of this, it's one thing on physical products (where at least you can put it down to "shipping"), but when buying the exact same software, (or even the same song), costs at least 100% more, then there is no other explanation than price gouging. Particularly galling when most of these countries don't pay much Australian tax on their Australian profits either.
Re:Translate this to legalese: (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as media goes, I'm hopeful that something might come of this, it's one thing on physical products (where at least you can put it down to "shipping"),
This went out the window when I could import a kitchen from the US paying shipping, taxes and imports for 1/2 of what I paid here (we're talking oven, cooktop, fridge, dishwasher, stone benchtops). Well over A$1000 worth of stuff so no tax free threshold. Still managed to save near to $3000.
Even with Games/Media. I order DVD box sets from the UK with shipping it costs half of what the same box set costs here.
Dont even get me started on cars. How can BMW sell a car for $350,000 in Australia when the same model is $100,000 in the UK. Even sans the LCT (Luxury Car Tax), GST (Goods and Services Tax) and import duties, that's still $220,000 base price and the UK price includes their 20% VAT.
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Impressive. Where did you order your kitchen things?
bad idea ? (Score:2, Insightful)
difference in pricing models like this encourages piracy.
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uh. replying to undo mistaken negative comment
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Piracy?
Continued watering down of words. Grey markets perhaps. Not piracy.
A real pirate would climb up an anchor rope and silently kill every person on the ship. Not unlike a ninja.
Bunch of pansies living in their parents basement running torrent software. Pirates?
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Why are you being such an underachiever?
With your knowledge of virology, biology and access to equipment/facilities you should be able to hold an entire COUNTRY hostage.
Always aim high. There is nothing motivation, drive and access to biological/chemical resources can't achieve!
Re:bad idea ? (Score:5, Funny)
Let me have a go:
Monkey == Human
Robot == Overlord
Zombie == Politician
What do I win?
Re:bad idea ? (Score:5, Interesting)
difference in pricing models like this encourages piracy.
True, and then companies will hike the prices up in the regions with high piracy rates to "compensate", which makes the piracy problem even worse, and you have an ever-escalating cycle.
But the problem here is price fixing, using protectionist legislation as the method of artificially controlling the prices of products that have a near-monopoly in the market.
The only real solution to this is to disallow region based controls, and turn the laws around so that it becomes illegal to restrict users based on geography.
A free market is anti-competitive unless it's free for the buyer as well as the seller.
No, we're not price gouging (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly, one Australian company made the submission that it was cheaper to send an employee business class from Australia to the US to buy a certain piece of software there, stay for a night or two in a hotel, fly back, and pay import and/or GST at customs than it was to get the software locally.
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Don't worry, that won't be the case for long, (and not in a good way) companies would love to make buying something outside your local authorized dealer illegal.
Re:No, we're not price gouging (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't worry, that won't be the case for long, (and not in a good way) companies would love to make buying something outside your local authorized dealer illegal.
It may not be illegal yet, but Adobe has already moved in that direction.
Adobe closed off their international sales for several weeks while they reviewed their international pricing, right as we needed to bring on more people for a new project. After a few weeks of being told we'd be able to buy more licenses any day now, we sent someone to the US to buy a couple of retail copies so we could at least have new people doing more than just surfing the net. Within 24 hours of installing the US boxed copies we had Adobe on the phone demanding to know why our company was running pirated copies of their software, and threatening to revoke *all* of our licenses if we didn't remove them immediately. Turns out they consider running a US boxed copy in a foreign country as a breach of contract and will cut you off. Eventually they had to admit that we had been trying, continuously, to buy a copy from them, and agreed to let us continue until their online store reopened so we could replace the copies we were running.
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They agreed to let you run your legally purchased copies, for a while.
Wow, god job Adobe.
That is why I don't buy panasonic kit (Score:5, Insightful)
Ten years ago my parents bought me a video camera, they were on holiday in the USA. A few months later it broke. Panasonic UK refused to service it (even if I paid) claiming that it was not one of their products. Basically they were protecting their extra margin because these things were sold at a higher price in the UK than in the USA. This is short termed thinking - I will avoid buying from them ever again.
Companies like globalisation - they make goods where it is cheapest and sell the same stuff at different prices everywhere. But if we, the consumer, try to do the same they stop it. There is an inbalance of power, large corporates abuse it. We like to think that we live in a free market, we do not.
Price gouging invites you to see the world. (Score:2)
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Interestingly, one Australian company made the submission that it was cheaper to send an employee business class from Australia to the US to buy a certain piece of software there, stay for a night or two in a hotel, fly back, and pay import and/or GST at customs than it was to get the software locally.
Been there, done that. Used to work for a GIS outfit with a small office in San Diego. Basically 2 guys working out of the spare room in one of their homes. If we wanted to buy some software and didn't need it right now, we'd get them to buy it and post us the box (this was back in 05 when sending 12 gigs was faster via airmail than Internet).
We all know why ... (Score:2)
Smaller market = higher overheads
There are still support, distribution costs and compliance costs associated with having a local operation - only a fully online model alleviates that and even then time zone issues imply potential for increased costs
To some extent, digital distribution and limited local support brings these costs down - the perfect example is Apple whose products are now more or lineball with US markets thanks to digital distribution of software, useless tech support and enough volume to com
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Depends which "they" you are referring to ???
Apple and Microsoft certainly have large operations in Australia but would still wouldn't push through many copies of niche products.
I don't know about Adobe however - they certainly have corporate offices here.
Because they can (Score:5, Informative)
That is the only honest answer that there is. As long as artificial monopolies like 'regions' are tolerated it will only continue. There is no valid reason why software or other companies should be able to use globalism for cheaper labor whilst denying consumers globalism for cheaper products. I don't see how things are going to change until world governments start demanding better treatment though.
Why are textbooks 1/10th the cost in Indonesia? Why couldn't I buy Top Gear in the US for years when it was available for cheap overseas in the discount bin? Why are Corvette's twice the price in Europe? The list goes on and the answer come back to artificial monopolies charging more because they can. Introduce competition, make grey market imports legal, demand manufacturers honor warranties regardless of the country of origin, allow people to buy software in any country regardless of where they live etc......
Re:Because they can (Score:5, Interesting)
"That is the only honest answer that there is. As long as artificial monopolies like 'regions' are tolerated it will only continue. There is no valid reason why software or other companies should be able to use globalism for cheaper labor whilst denying consumers globalism for cheaper products."
You might find this story interesting.
I think it was 1992, Texas decided to build another prison, located in New Boston, Tx. A Pennsylvania company won the contract, and part of the contract covered employment of local workers. A journeyman carpenter was supposed to get $13.00 or $13.50/hr.
When the company started hiring, they were paying $11.00/hr for journeymen craftsmen.
This obviously violated the contract - but the Pennsylvania company went to court, and successfully argued that because they were working in an "economically depressed" area, that $11.00 was equivalent to the wages stated in the contract. That is, $11.00 in the Texarkana area was equal to the $13.00 or $13.50 in Pittsburgh, Pa.
There is always some imaginary bullshit excuse for ripping off the locals.
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When we move to all digital, we're screwed (Score:5, Insightful)
The next gen of consoles are going to screw us on digital sales, infact anyone selling movies / games / music digitally in general, I hate to go all tinfoil on you guys but they've proven time and time again, they simply do not care about foreigners.
If you can charge bob 3$ for the icecream and mary 8$, then do it â" especially if you're the only place selling icecream now. Only bob is America and we're mary.
To take it to 11 on the tinfoil mode, when things become all digital "they" will have control, full control. EA have already proven just how evil digital control is, go find a GOTY edition of Mass Effect 1 2 or 3. They don't exist. You think you're getting a bargain when you buy Mass Effect 2, a 50$ US PC game for 5$ on a Steam sale? Awesome! (Well you are, it's still good) but the DLC is on THEIR controlled internal store and it's ONLY on their store and do you think the DLC is marked down to 10 or 15% of the original cost like the full game? Ok what about 20%? or 30%? No. Not only is it extremely rarely marked down, when it is, it's a small amount (I think it's been on sale twice, in nearly 3 years)
The console manufacturers are sadly GOING to region lock us when it's all digital and they WILL charge us more than Americans. Interestingly we probably wouldn't even notice or care if it was 20 years ago and we didn't have American buddies posting on the same forums or links to deals or reddit threads or whatever saying "holy crap, I just got a sweet God of War 4 deal on the PSN store for only 9.99" â" except we'll click the link "not available in your region" or "on special, this week only, 49$ AUD"
Australians need to be prepared that this whole digital thing IS going to shoot us square in the wallet, then the face. I'd wager good money on this.
Long story short, region free PS3 took me from being a dodgy pirate to someone really happy to purchase games, I'm happy to pay 20 to 50$ US a game, no qualms - hell the Americans do it, don't you? Except they frequently try to stiff us from 95 to 120$ US a shot,....... it's unreasonable, it's bullshit and unacceptable.
Even worse is on digital stores online, they detect my IP and the price for a digital product of 1's and 0's is 30 to 100% more. It's _incredibly_ frustrating as almost any foreigner could tell you.
Long story short? You think this is bad now? Just wait, soon there won't BE steam "gifting" from your American pals, there won't be a US PSN store to log in to with PSN credits you purchased on Amazon, there won't be stores which will ship you foreign region free games. There won't be a G2play where I can buy a cheap key of Diablo or Starcraft cheaper than the Blizzard online store or retail. Why would Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft provide these 3'rd party 'stores' keys to sell?
Australians, in my opinion we're actually in the peak part of bargains right here, in 2011/2012/2013 and maybe 2014 - we've got fairly cheap international shipping, we're in the mid retail -> digital conversion so everyone is clamouring for our buck. Soon the loopholes will be closed, the infrastructure, policies, design all in place for a single store for companies and bam. Kiss the awesome times we've had goodbye. :/
Finally, most stores won't do deals like Valve, they seem to be one of the few with respect for the customer, we're in for a bad time
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Go to the store over Tor. Call it Tor roulette. You'll never know what price they are going to charge or where they will be willing to ship.
You do have an option (Score:4, Informative)
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If you can charge bob 3$ for the icecream
Am I the only one old enough to go into mental arithmetic mode to figure out how much a shilling and three pence was in dollars?
(About 10 cent, in case anyone wonders.)
I know why. (Score:5, Funny)
. . . it's because they have to translate their product into a weird foreign language. Right?
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Surely that's a cost saver. Australian documentation can be condensed to "No worries, mate".
American psychology (Score:2, Funny)
It's not that non-US prices are higher, it is that US prices are made low. This is because Americans are cheap bastards even though many have lots of money to spend. It is a big market, but one you can only break into at discount prices. On the plus side, it is easier to offload low quality goods to the US. Many companies are learning fast and sending lower QA-scoring product runs to the US, sometime even seperate products for specific low-quality US chains like Walmart. However, if your products are n
I wish Germany would do that ... (Score:2)
Many products cost the US$-price in Euro here ... or even more in Euro than in US$ ... e.g., one of our customers complained about our price for a Fortinet device. They looked up the device on the Internet and found it on some supplier's page ... after converting the prices, it turned out that the street price in the US (including VAT but without state sales tax) was about more than 40% under our wholesale price (without VAT) according to the official price list (and we already get a pretty good rebate on t
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Um, what is the typical VAT in the US?
I think it's about 0%
you're an idiot. the US equivalent is sales tax.
and while they're too stupid to mark it on their prices in shops it's still there.
about time (Score:2)
It's not just Apple, MS, etc. either.
We get ripped off on most things here. Rear tyres for my car - US price: $300/each. Local price? $900 each. Computer stuff is generally more expensive in terms of AU vs US dollars by a factor of 1.5 or more. Our dollar is currently above parity...
Fuel is about $1.50 per litre. A coffee from a cafe is about $5. A subway 11" long sandwich is about $6-7.
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Tyres at $900 each are obviously at the very premium/niche end of the market - either high-performance or unusual size (or both!) .. I have the same experience ... In fact, that is about as niche as you can get without trying to get Pirellis P-Zeros for your Gallardo (or equiv sports car scenario)
Sad reality is they just don't sell enough to be economical but instead of not offering them at all, they make them reflective of the actual costs.
Your typical Commodore/Falcon or small hatchback tyres are basicall
Why not just ignore the copyright... (Score:4, Interesting)
Simply don't enforce any copyright laws against these products until the pricing reaches parity. "Authorize" a local "distributor" to sell it at the cost of the blank media it is distributed on. Make sure businesses are aware that they can get in on this action too, and that any copy acquired in this manner will be free from any future prosecution of copyright infringement. If the companies don't play ball after that, Australia suddenly becomes a much cheaper place to set up a small business... win-win.
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Pretty simple really (Score:4, Informative)
When companies conduct business internationally, they usually negotiate a fixed exchange rate for a year (or a quarter). It helps insulate their annual financial planning from fluctuations in the currency markets. So when the AUD first shot up, the vendors importing US software still had to pay 1.3 AUD per 1.0 USD, even though 1.3 AUD was now worth closer to 1.4 USD. The next year when they went to negotiate currency exchange prices again, the US companies said "OMG! You want a 40% price cut? You can't be serious!" And the Australian vendors didn't have purchasing power to negotiate a better deal. So year after year they got shafted with prices based on pre-2007 exchange rates. (In the US companies' defense, they probably argued that if the AUD shot up 40% in a year, it could drop 40% the next year, and they weren't willing to take that big a risk and adjust the exchange rate by that large an amount. But it's unconscionable that it's continued for 5 years.)
There are several reasons for things to cost more. (Score:3)
The Aussie power plug is the most likely case for things to cost more. Anything that can be plugged in need a C-tick which is just like the FCC testing but it requires more paperwork and the standard is very slightly different. Other things have unique standards such as a kitchen faucet has to be certified to the local standard. Many of these standards are voluntary in the US under the UL approval process but are a legal requirement to follow an expensive, unique AS or ASNZ standard.
Cars have to be crash tested for the local market.
Local sales and support costs are far higher since local staff costs are much higher than in the US since minimum wage jobs there are often $20 to $30 an hour here. The cost of everything is higher so staff that can demand it, do want far more money. Construction costs are some of the highest in the world.
Local inflation is driven by a requirement that 9% of all employees money gets dumped into mutual fund like retirement funds that are simply trying to out gamble everyone else and not really invest so they are throwing around money like crazy.
The real issue is that land prices are hyper inflated and simply insane. The makers of Autocad have an office an hour drive away from down town sitting on land worth 10s of millions yet the same office in a almost rural area in a US city might cost nearly a million dollars. The land prices mean rent is very high and there are examples where the 2rd largest mall in town spent over a billion dollars to upgrade so basic economics say the rent of the smaller stores need to increase by at least $20,000 a month. The Costco built in Melbourne was the most expensive one in the world and far more expensive than the ones they have built in Tokyo.
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No they shouldn't. The producers determine the price for Austrailia if they sell there at all.
Re:Valve / Steam... (Score:4, Insightful)
[Steam] producers determine the price for Austrailia if they sell there at all.
Then these producers should "appear in public and take questions regarding their price hikes".
Re:Valve / Steam... (Score:5, Interesting)
No they shouldn't. The producers determine the price for Austrailia if they sell there at all.
This is similar to the philosophy in China. Everyone watches the latest Hollywood movies and uses the latest software. If the price is low enough they may decide to actually buy the legitimate copy instead of the bootleg. It sure is great when the government doesn't get involved... gotta love the free market system :).
Re:Valve / Steam... (Score:5, Interesting)
While I have no love for those companies, I wonder if the answer to your questions isn't going to be obvious (and annoying). It's "known" here in the US, that Europeans are willing to pay more for the same goods, and thus we charge them more for the same goods. Americans are known for choosing to buy cheap crap that will break in a week because it's cheaper, therefore more reliable vendors have to go lower to make the sale. Going to the farthest extreme, the Chinese are known for stealing software, movies, etc. and thus to make a sale there the price has to be very low.
They call this "market based pricing", and I agree that it is actually quite a destructive practice, but I don't think it's illegal.
Re:Valve / Steam... (Score:5, Informative)
It's not like the hardware is made in the USA and shipped to Australia, it's all made in the same Chinese/Asian factories and shipped over the Pacific anyway! Australians buy the same TVs/Computers/Cars (when we can get a decent model on the market) as the USA does. Sure, we're a smaller market, but that cost differences are Immense!
Re:Valve / Steam... (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to be under the misguided belief that costs determine prices. In the real world, that's only rarely true,
Microsoft, Adobe, etc are not charities like the Raspberry Pi foundation; they adjust their prices in order to maximize their profits.
In an ideal scenario, competition would lower the prices. There are many reasons why this doesn't happen in this market, but you can thank government-granted monopolies like patents for a big chunk of that - it's kinda hard to compete when you can't even implement FAT on your OS without paying Microsoft.
Re:Valve / Steam... (Score:5, Insightful)
I sure wouldn't want other countries which buy our imports to say to us "wait that's not fair; it only costs you guys $40/tonne to export iron ore and we're paying $150/tonne. We're going to get the government involved to try and fight that somehow".
To that I would say "the value of something is whatever its buyer is willing to pay for it" and we have to be consistent in that.
Re:Valve / Steam... (Score:4, Insightful)
They are profiteering.
No shit. No one was claiming otherwise. However, last time I checked the Australian government was pretty conservative and the country is pretty wealthy with an extremely low poverty rate. That makes it a goldmine.
Laissez-faire has its costs. [wikipedia.org] This is what happens when you charge whatever the market can bear, a market that can handle a heavy load, such as Australia, will get charged a premium. In countries like China, where these companies have to compete with free pirated software and cheap bootleg hardware, prices are bound to be substantially lower (not to mention the fact that China is lacking in economic freedom, so their government would have a much easier time intervening if foreign companies were attempting to gouge their upper class).
Don't blame these companies for playing by the established rules. Here in America we get fucked by these same companies in a different way: for the most part, they don't pay taxes. But I blame the system that allows them to do it, not the companies themselves. If you think this is "bullshit" then you should take active measures to oppose laissez-faire capitalism -- don't cry like a little girl about it. Don't stonewall your mind to any logical arguments that may oppose your claim of "bullshit," at least make a cogent argument as to why it's bullshit.
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Move location? That's a stupid answer. The correct answer is you stand up for what you believe is right. If you don't stand up for what you believe in (i.e. run away to China as you suggest) then you are a coward. Not only are you a coward but you relinquish your right to have an opinion and believe in that opinion strongly enough to fight for it. Nice answer apart from that.
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Why can they sell it to the "poor people" (your words) at a much cheaper price and still make a profit? But if you're "richer" they sell it to you for more. Does that make any sense at all?
It's no different than here, in America, where you can go into a convenience mart in the ghetto and get the same things you would in a convenience mart in a wealthy neighborhood except much cheaper. When I drive through the ghetto I fill up my tank b/c gas is always cheaper (along with everything else). It's called capitalism. Removing these inequities requires government intervention and there are often negative consequences that go along with that. I'm a socialist but I don't blindly support government in
Re:Valve / Steam... (Score:5, Informative)
And there is a very high cost to having a Walmart in your town. Low wages, no or poor health benefits shifting the costs to the taxpayer along with the massive tax incentives they receive that other local businesses can't get drive local businesses out of business. Whole towns have been decimated economically by a Walmart moving in. And when they become the only employer a town has, that town will always be at the mercy of Walmart.
Might I suggest the following for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jazb24Q2s94 [youtube.com]
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Australians buy the same TVs/Computers/Cars (when we can get a decent model on the market) as the USA does.
No, you don't.
On which side of the road do you drive and where is the steering wheel located?
Which Analog and Digital broadcasting systems does Australia use, it's most certainly not NTSC/ATSC, so you can't leverage the "we buy the same stuff as Americans" because you don't. You have to have your OWN models specific to a country no where near the other English speaking countries in the middle of a huge ocean.
And even with digital stuff, you don't use the same spelling as the US and you have a Wacky media
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These companies do the same with the Canadian market (costs are usually 30% higher) where we do have the same standards as America. Usually these companies don't bother to fix their spelling and often measure things in US units.
Re:Valve / Steam... (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet if I was to go overseas and buy as many copies of Photoshop as I can fit in my bag, jet back to Oz and resell them it is illegal [slashdot.org].
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Valve / Steam... (Score:4, Insightful)
_that_ is the problem.
Australia can make this a lot easier by changing the rules:
0) it's totally legal for people to import and re-sell stuff they buy legitimately elsewhere in the world
1) anyone bringing software in from the USA can easily pay sales tax on it before reselling (no other import duties though)
2) the manufacturing company isn't allowed to disadvantage the user merely for using software / product in Australia
#2 is hardest to balance. In the case of Microsoft,
-refusing to activate windows would not be acceptable.
-Saying that you have to get customer support on the standard usa numbers in usa times would be acceptable.
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Re:Valve / Steam... (Score:4, Informative)
Software AND hardware costs about twice the price in third world countries, it DEFINITELY does not cost less.
Re:Valve / Steam... (Score:5, Insightful)
I already know the answer. It's the same reason Canadians pay far more for the same items in the US even though our dollar has been at parity for years now.
There was one scandal where Bombardier, a Canadian company receiving government money, was charging Canadians more for ATVs made in Canada than they charged in the US. So effectively the Canadian government was subsidizing a company to rip-off it's own citizens.
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And now here's something I hope you'll really enjoy (some dudes rant on the topic):
http://www.snowandmud.com/just-about-anything-goes-76/canadian-dollar-ski-doo-rip-off-5380.html [snowandmud.com]
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Only if you start shipping Smarties south of the border.
Re:Valve / Steam... (Score:5, Informative)
You talk about that one scandal as if it's unique, there are MANY examples of us paying more for Canadian made products than the Americans do. There was a news article a year or two ago about a specific model of car that was priced more than $10,000 higher at the Canadian dealership across the street from the factory than it was in Hawaii, and best of all, the excuse given was that the transportation costs in Canada were higher!
Thing is, the Canadian government has "investigated" this sort of thing many times, including yet another report that came out just last week. Do you think anything will ever change?
Canadians pay more because... well, because we pay more, that's why!
On some things we can buy online and get the same price as the rest of the world, but if you just can't do that (some products don't work well that way, and the government makes it illegal to do so with other ones, not to mention the companies that flat out refuse to sell to customers outside the US) then you're just screwed.
Re:Valve / Steam... (Score:5, Interesting)
Canada and the US share a boarder, so it is somewhat ridiculous for them to charge more in Canada than in Hawaii, that's a fair complaint. However, what I think is even more ridiculous is a car that's made in South Australia, the Pontiac G8 [wikipedia.org] is cheaper to buy in the US than in South Australia. The average price in South Australia is around $50,000 the average price in the US is around $30,000. Remembering that the dollar was at parity or close to parity. This means it was $20,000 cheaper to purchase a car that had been shipped to the US. GM has consistently done this to us, and just about every large company does this to us.
Valve actually doesn't do it that much, though some game producers that use Steam do.
Re: (Score:3)
slightly different in that due to our public health care system the governments actually legislate the prices for certain drugs.
Re:Valve / Steam... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Valve is mentioned in the article as one that people wanted investigated - but not as one that required a subpoena to provide information. This suggests that Valve voluntarily told them how their pricing works.
Which, as far as I know, is "We set what price the producer wants us to, or they refuse to sell on Steam at all."
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I tend to think they're fairly honest. I pay about what (when the US dollar currency takes a dive I smile... :) Cheap games! )Americans pay for their games, here in SA. They could really rip us off here (it is south africa they can charge pretty much what they like), but they don't. Add to that the endless specials and I have very little issue with them. Australia seems very different though for all things. People who go over from here are always complaining about the high cost of everything, expecially dat
Re:The FED (Score:5, Funny)
When you print money to pay off debts the currency devalues and it is a no brainer. THe exchange rates are going downhill as the house wants to debate whether to default or not eveyr 3 months.
Therefore, the Bank of Australia wants a higher percentage to avoid the risk as the dollar is the worlds worst currency right now with the highest risk. ... Well Japan might be tieing the US in this area if the government improves more printing of money.
So MS responds with the 30% premium to convert dollars to Australias currency by passing it on to the consumer.
IT also explains why healthcare costs are skyrocketing up with insurnace, food, housing and student loans while incomes decline. All this free money given to rich by low interest rates inflates the money supply.
Holy shit. It's a real life application of the Chewbacca Defense. This is amazing... :)
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It's not really that complicated, as long as you don't have a PhD in economics it's pretty clear. The fact that it's not more commonly known is purely because people are incredibly lazy when it comes to intellectual matters.
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Hi there, I've got a degree in economics, you're wrong. That shit's retarded.
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You are a rambling mad man (Score:2)
Sometimes I need to pretend I am a rambling mad man as a joke amongst friends. The problem is I can never quite pull of something which is coherent enough to actually be said by someone, yet insane enough to actually stand out as this guy is obviously a rambling mad man.
My go to response used to be some mish-mash of an Allen Ginsberg poem, something like...
"I passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, if I was expelled from the aca
Re:Build Your own software (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the problem is that the manufacturer's use globalization to pick and choose the cheapest components, and the cheapest labour form anywhere they can, and then turn around and deny their customer's the same thing by region locking things, writing contracts prohibiting their dealers from selling to people out of country, and all sorts of other BS that they themselves don't have to deal with.
If "Free Trade" applied to customers as equally as corporations I don't think anyone would have an issue with a company pricing things however they wanted, wherever they wanted. It's the fact that I often am not allowed to pick the cheapest location that bothers me.
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Sounds cool.
Except, our government is actively engaged in writing treaties to prevent anyone outside the United States having the freedom to do anything other than pay us.
In short, you're an ethnocentric nationalist who easily justifies anything that screws the outsiders.
And, you make a nationalist like myself look bad, just by breathing.
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You should be lucky that we even bother "selling" it to you anyway for all the good plastic Monopoly money is worth.
...which was the more than the US' paper money was worth, last time I checked.
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Re:Price Fixing? (Score:4, Informative)
You might want to research your info a bit before you start spewing Fox talking points.
If you'd bothered to check when a Republican last balanced a budget, you would find that it was in 1957 under Eisenhower. Obama, in his last term, increased the debt/GDP by ~10%. If you look at Reagan and Bush Jr, both of them had terms that increased the debt/GDP by over 25%.
Don't believe me? Google "which republican president balanced a budget?". You might learn something.
Re:Price Fixing? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Aussies don't like price fixing, which hasn't been suggested, and they don't like be 'gahzumped' either. A similar problem happened 25 years ago when people realized that CD cost pennies to make and $20 each to buy. The music industry claimed it was the cost of innovation and something 'for the artists'.
The sad truth being anti-American politicians don't last very long in Australia, so our pack of officially elected cowards will do absolutely nothing.
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What is that anyways?
Nevermind, even if it's an 8GB anal vibrator I'll still take it.
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Fuck that, we (australians) are rich, we'll keep on buying (cr)apple stuff and get reamed up the arse, regardless.
I know what you are saying is the correct thing to do, but the public just won't. I think australian history is a big part of it; we actually have never had to fight for anything, well maybe kill off the natives, but we don't have any great revolutionary tales, nor critical events where australians had to fight for their rights or seriously risk invasion; we also don't really get taught about ot