Aussie Parliamentary Inquiry Into Software Pricing Announced

New submitter elphie007 writes "Australian consumers may finally see the end of being overcharged for software simply because they live outside the U.S. Minister for Communications Senator Stephen Conroy (champion of Australia's National Broadband Network) is reported to be finalizing the terms of reference for a parliamentary inquiry into software pricing in Australia. Last week, Adobe announced Australians would be charged up to $1,600 more for Adobe CS6. With the ongoing strength of the Aussie dollar against the U.S. dollar, Australians should really be paying less, not more for software & music purchased online."

Comments

To be fair

[symbolset]

Translating text and manuals to Australian isn't free.

Re:To be fair

[Netshroud]

All you have to do is script 180 degree rotation on every page.

Re:To be fair

[icebike]

Translating text and manuals to Australian isn't free.

Neither is appearing in Australian Court when some customer decides to sue you, or the Australian government decides to pull you through some local knot hole of product liability that is over the top when compared to what is required in the US.

Because of different Taxing regulations, the software may have sold for that much higher if it was developed in Australia,

As for the strength of the Australian dollar, that is purely a rubbish argument, because US companies typically price their software in US dollars, and let the exchange rate take care of itself.

$1600 more sounds like over kill, (depending on what percentage of list price it was). However, because of different Taxing regulations, the software may have sold for that much higher if it was developed in Australia, and the software manufacturers may be responsible for such tax difference. Australia has a GST tax. Just figuring out if you are liable for this will cost you a bundle. Collecting it and dealing with it from Chicago will cost you more in terms of staff time, and hiring work done in Australia.

It could easily be that the cost of doing business for high end software could amount to a pile of money.

Re:To be fair

[fostware]

Just rename the UK English...

It's not like the US doesn't know Engli...

Nevermind....

Re:To be fair

[Zerth]

The US price is 1300. Even including GST, that is in nearly double the US price. Considering the Aus $ trade for $1.04 USD, that's outrageous even including currency exchange costs.

Re:To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

The US price is 1300. Even including GST, that is in nearly double the US price. Considering the Aus $ trade for $1.04 USD, that's outrageous even including currency exchange costs.

Yeah we have the same problem in Europe.
I can't shake the thought that somehow worldwide suckers ahem (consumers) are subsidizing american consumers when they buy Adobe products, Microsoft, Autodesk you name it.

Re:To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

how is that close to double?

Re:To be fair

[the_B0fh]

jesus. no matter how stupid the topic is, you can find an apologist for it. Here're the rebuttal points:

1) USA is the most lawsuit happy country in the world. If the company can do business in USA, and the price covers the cost of lawsuits, then the same price will cover the price of lawsuits in Australia.

2) WTF are you smoking on development taxes? *NOBODY* pays fucking taxes on writing software, only on selling it. If you are talking about salaries of developers and so on, then shouldn't there be a *DISCOUNT* since it's so much cheaper to develop it elsewhere?!

3) I guarantee you Adobe has already figured out the taxing regulations previously, and it's fucking sunk cost. The cost of figuring out the tax regulations (as a delta against US tax regulations) do not recur yearly. If there are changes, it's the same kind of changes that happen in USA, and obviously Adobe USA can handle it, so why can't Adobe Australia?

You're full of shit.

Re:To be fair

[cheekyboy]

At least australia wont send you to gitmo or send some fake FBI to arrest you with false warrants.

Dude, all adobe is selling is a serial # for activation, it doesnt matter where one lives. I know you americans are poor and cant afford 20 tacos for lunch daily with their 4 gallon coke drinks.

Stop asserting MAYBEs.

My AU$ converted to US$ electronically is done automatically via Visa or Paypal, and at only 1-2% rates. NOT your imaginary 10%, high street 711 stand.

Buying a serial # from USA is not the same as importing products into AU. From adobes point of view, I an AU customer should be identical to an American.

Stop lying, american corporates are charging Au, Eu, Asia, everyone higher prices to subsidise the dismal crap economy in mainland USA. If you had zero foreign sales, your local ones will send you bankcrupt, but thats no reason to RIPOFF the planet, or all AU customers should just use a friend or proxy contact in usa to buy from usa.

Re:To be fair

[rgbrenner]

1300 is the price for the absolute cheapest version of Adobe CS6. The article says "UP TO" so we can assume that is for the most expensive version. The Adobe site says the Master Collection is $2600:
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite.html?kw=p&sdid=JRSIM&skwcid=TC|22178|adobe%20CS6||S|e|10550251960

Second, the article says it is "up to 1400 more", not 1600.

So 4000/2600 = 54% markup in Australia.

Re:To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would it be expensive to translate the American texts to Australian English? I would presume that once they were translated from American to any dialect of English the cost of translating to regional English dialects would be quite low.

Re:To be fair

[moss45]

Australia has a GST tax. Just figuring out if you are liable for this will cost you a bundle.

Figuring out whether you are liable for GST takes about 5 minutes. Registering for GST would take a few hours. Nearly every company in Australia registers for GST, so the government made it extremely simple. These things are such a marginal cost that it is ridiculous to use them as a reason for significant price differences.

Re:To be fair

[nedlohs]

As for the strength of the Australian dollar, that is purely a rubbish argument, because US companies typically price their software in US dollars, and let the exchange rate take care of itself.

They clearly don't. 10 years ago the AUD was worth US$0.50, now it's worth US$1. Software prices in Australia are not 50% less than they were (relative to US prices).

For example Office Professional Edition 2003 was announced at US$499 in 2003 in the US, but at AUD$899 in Australia. The AUD was worth USD$0.65 at the time. So the Australian version was USD$584 and USD$53 of that is GST giving a $32 or 6% premium over the US price which no one complained about since that's reasonable.

Now Microsoft Office Professional 2010 (2 PC/1 user version) is AUD$849 in Australia. It is USD$499.95 in the US. The AUD is currently worth USD$1.05. So the Australian version is USD$891 of which USD$81 is GST giving a USD$310 or 62% premium.

Notice even though the AUD has increased in value by about 60% in that time frame the relative USD/AUD prices have essentially remained unchanged (wooho a $50 reduction in Oz).

Australians wish they priced in USD, since then prices would have fallen by almost half over that time frame.

So how do you explain a 6% premium turning into a 60% premium? What massive changes product liability and taxation systems do you think happen in Australia?

Australia has a GST tax. Just figuring out if you are liable for this will cost you a bundle. Collecting it and dealing with it from Chicago will cost you more in terms of staff time, and hiring work done in Australia.

Oh sure. It's real hard. If you are you selling it in Australia then you add 10% to the price and send that in to the government. If you are selling it outside of Australia then you do nothing. Wow, that's so complicated! All software qualifies for the GST making it even simpler to work out.

Re:To be fair

[Mashiki]

Well I'll be honest. As a Canadian I know exactly what Aussies are going through, we've been dealing with it for decades and we're next to the US. It took a hell of a long time for it to change, the worst offenders were books. Seeing a list price on the back of $5.99USD and $11.99CDN with the dollar at parity broke the back of everyone on the issue. It was the same for software back about 15 years ago too. $49-59USD and $79-89CDN, until people said screw it and started ordering stuff from the US via backshop mailers who were willing to cut the price by $10.

Re:To be fair

[ColdWetDog]

Why would it be expensive to translate the American texts to Australian English? I would presume that once they were translated from American to any dialect of English the cost of translating to regional English dialects would be quite low.

Because you have to carefully read through all of the documentation and make sure that when someone talks about driving on the right side of the road, you change it to the left. Then you have to deal with bathtub whirlpools spinning in the opposite direction.

And don't get me started on the metric system.

All of that crap is time consuming and expensive. Somebody has to do it....

Re:To be fair

[moss45]

US price= US$2599

Aus price= AUD$3949= US$4134

US/AUS= 2599/4134= 0.62

So not double but still a 60% increase (50% when you take into account GST)

Re:To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that you have to translate it from American.

Re:To be fair

[Nursie]

Don't get me started on books in Australia!

A novel here usually costs in the 20-25 AUD range. This is because there is a special book tax meant to protect Australian local publishers. It's ludicrous.

Everyone, and I do mean pretty much everyone, now orders books, electronics and computer games from overseas, usually the US or UK, because the likes of Amazon can sell you the item and ship it to you for half the price of buying local.

Re:To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

When this kind of thing happens, it's usually down to the same problem - they're applying pricing that may have been appropriate ten or twenty years ago. Back then, Adobe would realistically have required an Australian presence, and the price they sell the software for would have to take that into account.

So, you'd have to manufacture the media and packaging somewhere (likely the same place as the US version, although they frequently have different boxes or documentation to go with them), ship that to Australia (which still costs more than shipping to the US, but not nearly as much as it used to), possibly pay import taxes, get (or become) an Australian distributor, pay local workers (who earn more than their US counterparts), local taxes (which are comparable, as far as I know), and then ship the software to retail locations (which costs more than it does in the US), who then sell it (paying local taxes, and local workers again).

Fine. That might account for some of the price difference. Not nearly all of it, though - doing business in Australia might be more expensive than the US, but it's not that much more expensive. So either Adobe, or their Australian distributor (which might actually be Adobe themselves, for all I know) are taking a huge chunk of extra profit from selling to Australian customers.

Doesn't explain online sales, though.

Adobe are, obviously, already taking a much larger slice of the pie from online sales, compared to physical sales. Delivering software, even something as large as Adobe's suite, doesn't cost nearly as much over the Internet. You don't have importing, you don't need anybody at all in the country you're selling to (in fact, it takes extra effort to even work out what country your customer is in), you likely don't have to pay any local taxes or import taxes (because you're not importing anything), and there's no production and shipping of physical media, and absolutely no middle-men (distributors, retailers, and so on) to deal with.

There are two reasons Adobe don't sell the online version for a significantly lower price than a boxed retail copy.

First, customers are obviously willing to pay the retail price. If those same customers then buy an upgrade from you (which is much more convenient than having to track down and buy a boxed copy), you get to keep all the money you'd have spent on production and shipping, plus you get to keep the cut that your distributors and retailers would have taken.

Second, they don't want to antagonize the distributors and retailers. They haven't moved to 100% digital distribution yet, so they still rely on distributors and retailers. If you undercut them by, say, 50%, nobody is going to buy retail copies. This is made worse in countries like Australia, where we have limited download quotas on virtually all ISPs, and until very recently, those quotas were extremely low. You could have easily burned through an entire month's allowance, just by buying one piece of software.

For example, I rarely bought games off Steam until a couple of years ago, precisely because downloading one game could easily burn through a month's quota. When I bought the Orange Box, it took me about four months to download all of it. Now, since the ISP I used allowed free access to Steam (doesn't count towards usage quota, as long as it comes off the Steam server co-located on their network), and our quotas increased significantly (something like 10x in the past five years), it's not a problem.

In related news: On Steam, Valve sell their games to Australian customers for exactly the same price as they sell to US customers. Billed in US dollars, since Valve has no Australian presence whatsoever. Smaller indie studios tend to do the same. So, I could have bought Portal 2 for something like AU$100, or I could have got it off Steam for US$40 (something like AU$38 at today's exchange rate, more like AU$42 back then).

Games published by larger companies, who DO have an Australian presence (and / or do business with Austra

Re:To be fair

[rgbrenner]

Didn't you just explain the entire markup?

adobe cs6 is $2600 usd + 1400 markup = 4000.. or 54% more - 10% GST = 44%

Coincidentally, that nearly matches the change in the exchange rates (according to you).

If I buy a microwave for $100 USD that was made in Mexico.. and the USD becomes worth more... They don't adjust their US price.. the manufacturer pockets the difference.

If Adobe software was priced at $4000 AUD, and the exchange rate changes, and they still priced it at 4000 AUD.. how is that any different. It's just keeping the local prices intact.

Re:To be fair

[rgbrenner]

And if you think Adobe should adjust their prices according to the exchange rate... I'm sure you won't protest when cs6 is 2600 AUD, and the next day you wake up and it's 2800 AUD... and within 3 months, it's 4000 AUD..

By your numbers, when the exchange rate recovers, Adobe CS6 should go from 2600 AUD today to 5200 AUD.

Australians will appreciate the inflation.. yes?

Re:To be fair

[commlinx]

Why would it be expensive to translate the American texts to Australian English?

Well I'm pretty sure the OP intended it as a joke, but on a serious note most software sold in the Australian market isn't localised anyway. For example in Windows 7 installed with Australia as the locale I have "color management" not "colour management". Microsoft Word comes with an Australian spell-check dictionary but otherwise all menus and documentation are American English. Not that I think many locals would really give a shit either way, especially if it meant paying more.

I can't think of any software off-hand where selecting the locale makes much of a meaningful difference other than timezones and metric units / paper sizes. But considering pretty much all the rest of the world uses metric you need that to export pretty much anywhere.

Re:To be fair

[voidphoenix]

Read TFS much?

Adobe announced Australians would be charged up to $1,600 more for Adobe CS6.

Re:To be fair

[Sir_Sri]

except all of the point of sale costs are paid in Australian dollars, to Australians. The fact that the Australian dollar has doubled in nominal value compared to the USD is mostly irrelevant.

As was said, the legal arrangements are made by hiring Australians, the distributors are paid in Australian dollars. Even if you're talking minimum wage employees the minimum wage in Australia is 15.51 an hour, it's 7.25 in the US. That's your phone support, delivery, even local web hosting type stuff.

Need local phone support? Local servers? Local.. well, anything? You're starting from a different footing than in the US.

Have a look at http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=as&v=67 and http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?v=67&c=us&l=en. That's the per capita PPP for Australia and the US. In 2003: 30k to 37k. In 2011 41k to 47k. Notice the problem with the currency argument yet? It means nothing. Just because the Australian dollar has relatively doubled in 8 years doesn't mean it has doubled its relative buying power. With nominal GDP on a per capita exchange rate basis for both 2003 and 2011, but I can't find that data very well. The same articles I linked give australia a 2003 nominal GDP of 542 billion, 2011 1.24 trillion, and the US 10.x to 14.x, but without population numbers and it's too late for me to hunt for more data. So yes, while australias currency converted GDP has almost tripled compare to the us 40% increase), their per capita buying power hasn't done that. The price of any given item is both a symptom of that, and of the cause of it, at the same time. Software development isn't worth dramatically more in 2011 than it was in 2003 the way say.. mining has been.

When you talk about microsoft products specifically, they audit your compliance with their licences. If you're using a home and student product on a business machine that doesn't tend to go over well. Who do you think does the auditing? They're paying Australians. In fact, if you look at the microsoft australia jobs page (https://careers.microsoft.com/search.aspx#&&page=1) most of the positions are services of various sorts and sales, including a licencing executive position. I somehow doubt the average microsoft Australia employee has seen his (in aud) pay increase by a factor of 2.5 since 2003. Possible. But I doubt it.

In europe everything 'costs more' because taxation is loaded into purchases, and because local point of sale cost employees are paid a lot more than they are in the US. And on some things the tax rates are just different. With Australia you do have compliance costs for a small market, which have to be done locally. It sounds stupid, but I doubt microsoft can add in support for 'english, australian' for nothing, they probably have to have specialists who determine what goes in that version, and, again, small market. They have sales costs (because the box copy in store is the same price as the one you order online basically), if you want to download it they need to have the network infrastructure to support that. If you need support (i.e. phone support) they need someone working your timezone, which is either pay someone night shift in the US and hook up the call centre, or pay locals (and given how big australia is you may need two call centres for each time zone and so they can be connected reasonably well).

When it comes to paying corporate executives Australia, Canada and the EU are a bargain compared to the US. When it comes to paying everyone else the US is dirt cheap and only out competed by china and poorer economies.

lets put this another way. Since the AUD has doubled since 2003 has your pay been halved to compensate? Right.

Now adobe CS6 is a whole other problem. Since well, you're buying a lot more than a box of software usually. It's the same basic problem as office, support etc. but at a whole other level, since it's a much smaller market and much more specialized knowledge to provide support and licencing.

Re:To be fair

[AK Marc]

I can't get Amazon US to send me anything. I get better results from Amazon UK, even though it travels farther to get to me (US is usually cheaper, but if they won't send it, I have to get it from the UK who will or send it to someone in the US who will then resend it to me)..

Re:To be fair

[sg_oneill]

At least australia wont send you to gitmo or send some fake FBI to arrest you with false warrants.

You really haven't been following the anti-association law stuff recently havent you?

In numerous states now, if you so much as talk to an outlaw biker you can get done for serious time, and in most the cases what designates an outlaw organization is not decided by judicial review but the whims of the police minister. Theres nothing in the language of the laws that says they cant declare an unpoular political group, like socialists, or activist group, like the sea shephards (Ok granted sea shephard is very popular in australia, just not with the government) to be an illegal organization and thus imprison people simply because they want to organize around their beliefs.

Our political masters have been taking notes from abroad, and its not looking good.

Re:To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

well on that front, if the exchange rate changes to make it more expensive all of these people are to ready to INCREASE their price,but when the exchange rate alters in Australias favour it is very rare to see a decrease in retail price

just saying

Re:To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, None of them has local phone support, Its all passed on to their "international" call centres in India or the Philippines,
and GST ?
GST on products Australians buy from overseas sites is 0%, unless the item is over $1,000 in which case it is 10%
so apple and others could save themselves a lot of GST headaches by allowing Australians to buy their software from an overseas site.

Re:To be fair

[AK Marc]

The exchange rate won't recover. The USD is worth about 10% of the OZ dollar, and will hit that soon enough, whenever China decides to pull the plug on the US dollar.

Re:To be fair

[crutchy]

lol you're comparing litigation in australia with the us, and trying to convince us that it costs more in australia... bahahaha... what a moron

Re:To be fair

[AvitarX]

Don't worry. We're subsidizibf your lifestyle too. With our purely private healthcare (higher rates for drugs paying much of the research) and defense (all our soldiers everywhere).

Re:To be fair

[AvitarX]

Because china (as a huge exporter) can afford to pull the plug on the largest importer. That'd work really well for them:-)

Re:To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't want your soldiers. Take them home.

- Regards, The World.

Re:To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

You're arguing that the costs for Adobe/Microsoft's Australian operations effctively double to price of the product they sell. Well, as an Australian business customer I fail to see any value-add from Adobe or Microsoft having an Australian presence -

Software distribution is handled by, shockingly, software distribution companies like Tech Pacific or Ingram Micro.
Distributors onsell products to retailers or resellers etc.
The resellers provide local sales support (eg sell the phyiscal media, preinstall it on PC's etc)
Any technical support is handled by the Asia Pacific regional callcentre for the relevant company - generally not in Australia.
Any licencing issues are handled by Microsoft / Adobe America directly, generally or automated systems.
Vey little of this distribution and support chain requires the interaction of Microsoft Australia employees.

Since I manage software for a reasonable sized company we get our licences via a reseller, and download the media, so we don't use their software distribution chain, anyway.

The only time Microsoft or Adobe have any direct interaction with their customers is at trade shows, or advertising etc; eg this is just the cost of doing business in any country. They're certainly not adding much value-add compared to purchasing the software dierctly from the US. I can't see how they could justify doubling the price on their products due to the cost of maintaining a local Australian presence.

If the cost of an Australian presence really was an issue, they could shut the australian offices and just run from singapore or something, Most customers wouldn't notice any difference.

Re:To be fair

[DarwinSurvivor]

Don't forget cars. We pay about 25% more for new cars in Canada than we would if we drove 20 minutes south and bought the EXACT SAME car. I'm seeing people shipping regular cars in from EUROPE because it's cheaper than buying them here!

Re:To be fair

[blind biker]

All you have to do is script 180 degree rotation on every page.

And insert "cunt" wherever appropriate^Wnecessary.

Re:To be fair

[Hognoxious]

there is a special book tax meant to protect Australian local publishers.

But there is an exemption if they've already been coloured in.

Re:To be fair

[Nursie]

It seems to be very variable by person. Maybe because I started my account in the UK I fall under different rules?

What they won't send me are computer games that have been banned here, so they must be applying some rules, but I can get electronics, books and most games.

Re:To be fair

[Nursie]

I made the mistake of looking up the price of a car I was interested in on their US site a while back. When I realised I was looking in the wrong place and found the australia site, it was a straight double in price.

This is not just a question of handedness, shipping and volume. These cars already come in right-hand drive because of Japan and Europe, shipping does not cost $30,000, and people buy a lot of Toyota's in Australia.

It's just a giant rip off

Re:To be fair

[MoonBuggy]

I'm in the UK, where price disparities aren't quite so bad any more, but I (and presumably many other customers) would actually be more than happy with exchange rate tracking prices; hell, plenty of us do buy from US companies and pay in USD, at whatever rate we get that day, but unfortunately the copyright holders are always trying to make that more difficult.

The issue with your post is that, for some reason, you still include the 44% markup in your baseline prices. The GP specifically said that people didn't mind paying twice the dollar amount when the exchange rate was at about 0.5, and if the cost went up as rates changed drastically, that would be understandable - why do you calculate that rate change on an AUD$2600 base price rather than the actual USD base price, though?

Re:To be fair

[Antarius]

Some of the Australian made cars sell for less in the US than they do in Australia.

That's after shipping the fuckers across to the other side of the world. How the hell does that work?

Re:To be fair

[rgbrenner]

the AUD/USD exchange rate can fluctuate by 2% per day. On CS6, that would be a $50 change per day.

You can pretend that you wouldn't mind a 2% fluctuation, but people will care about a $50 change in the price per day.

Either Australians will be outraged it changed so rapidly (and Adobe's greed), or they will try to play the exchange rates to purchase at the lowest price, making demand very variable.

Probably both.

why do you calculate that rate change on an AUD$2600 base price rather than the actual USD base price, though?

Right now, 1 AUD is about 1 USD. Since CS6 is 2600 USD, it's also 2600 AUD (without the GST).

Re:To be fair

[rgbrenner]

You're obviously trolling.. but 1 AUD is 1.047 USD
https://www.google.com/finance?q=CURRENCY:AUDUSD

If you click on the 10 year chart, you'll see in 2008, it went from 0.97 cents to 0.6175 cents within 3 months. So it can recover (not saying it will, but it's possible).

Re:To be fair

[gl4ss]

the base price for sw is pulled out of a hat in the first place.
it's priced at what people are going to be willing to be paying at. it's not potatoes that have a market as such, it's not something that takes x amount to make and you need a 30% profit calculated on top of that.

the reason for adobe to even have an australian(or similar country) presence is purely for advertising and school lobbying and extra paid support(courses, shit like that, stuff that's actually high profit). and fwiw the price in their web shop(on the global webshop..) is a wee bit higher for finland than for australia.

Re:To be fair

[sonamchauhan]

> By your numbers, when the exchange rate recovers, Adobe CS6 should go from 2600 AUD today to 5200 AUD.
>
> Australians will appreciate the inflation.. yes?

Yes, because its based on reality, not profit mongering based on hiding information.

This behavior is why me and thousands of other internet-savvy Australians have setup virtual US postal addresses (me with myus.com)

Re:To be fair

[Runaway1956]

It is common practice to price things at "what the market will bear". When Australians stop bearing the price, the prices will come down. It's really that simple.

These liabilities you speak of? Well - if I'm offering free or almost free software, filled with disclaimers that the software may not be fit for any use whatsoever, then the consumer's perception of liability isn't going to be very high.

On the other hand, if I'm touting my software as necessary, trustworthy, efficient, and simply THE BEST solution on earth, while charging a month or more wages from the average consumer - the customer is going to have very high expectations. And, after taking all his money, he most certainly will consider taking me to court when he finds that my software is just so much shit

Need a car analogy?

I'm looking at a used car. Blue book is $1000, let's say. It's pretty - but the engine sounds rough. The dealer agrees that the car may not be very dependable, and we arrive at a price of $600. I buy it, the damned thing burns up, and I'm out $600. I'm a bit disappointed - but I'm not pissed at the car dealer. He worked with me, recognized my risk, and we did arrive at decent agreement. Plus, I still have the car with a burned up engine, which I can use for parts, sell for scrap, or tow to the junkyard to recover part of my investment. Or, maybe even put a new(er) engine into.

Same car, same circumstances, but the dealer drives a hard bargain. He assures me that the car was a single owner vehicle, some little old lady only drove it to the store once a week, the roughness I hear is due to not being driven enough, blah blah blah ad nauseum - AND, he says he stands behind all his vehicles. I pay the $1200 he is asking, take it home, and it burns up. Yes - I'm pissed. The bastard won't take it back, won't allow me anything on another car, and I'm out about $1000 even if I tow the hulk to the junkyard.

See the difference there?

Re:To be fair

[Runaway1956]

You and AC both have it wrong. They aren't subsidizing us, nor are we subsidizing them. We're both being anally raped by the corporations. Goods and services simply do not cost what we are being charged, even allowing for reasonable profits. Companies that have billions in liquid assets which they don't even have a use for are proof of that.

Oh - those drugs? Most of them are shit anyway. Where is the cure for cancer? Alzhiemers? Diabetes? I read an article just a few days ago, about the number of Americans who are on life-time regimens of various drugs. The pharmaceutical companies don't want to cure any thing - they just want consumers to become dependent on their drugs. Psychologically dependent, or physically dependent - it doesn't matter. It's the revenue that matters. Lives mean shit to them.

Re:To be fair

[PhunkySchtuff]

Didn't you just explain the entire markup?

adobe cs6 is $2600 usd + 1400 markup = 4000.. or 54% more - 10% GST = 44%

Coincidentally, that nearly matches the change in the exchange rates (according to you).

If I buy a microwave for $100 USD that was made in Mexico.. and the USD becomes worth more... They don't adjust their US price.. the manufacturer pockets the difference.

If Adobe software was priced at $4000 AUD, and the exchange rate changes, and they still priced it at 4000 AUD.. how is that any different. It's just keeping the local prices intact.

No, you're wrong. Adobe deals with the distributors here in Australia with a price list that is based on US dollars and fluctuates almost daily. If the AUD is suddenly worth less against the USD, the price goes up. Most resellers will, to a point, absorb some of this cost to keep a nice round figure for the price on their website, but even some resellers will quote against the current price and that quote will only be valid for a week as the price does move frequently.

Re:To be fair

[hxnwix]

the AUD/USD exchange rate can fluctuate by 2% per day. On CS6, that would be a $50 change per day.

You can pretend that you wouldn't mind a 2% fluctuation, but people will care about a $50 change in the price per day.

Either Australians will be outraged it changed so rapidly (and Adobe's greed), or they will try to play the exchange rates to purchase at the lowest price, making demand very variable.

Probably both.

why do you calculate that rate change on an AUD$2600 base price rather than the actual USD base price, though?

Right now, 1 AUD is about 1 USD. Since CS6 is 2600 USD, it's also 2600 AUD (without the GST).

Excuse me, but I'd take a $1600 discount in exchange for $50 variability. I import a lot from the US, converting NOK to USD daily. It's really not that much of a problem. Milk, eggs, gasoline, fruit, fertilizer, salt, gold, wood, diamonds, the real value of the USD itself, interest rates, RAM, vinyl siding, hard drive, bunker C fuel oil, airfare, cigarette, broccoli, and liquid nitrogen prices vary daily. They don't cost the theoretical maximum expected value over the next 2 years. They cost what they are worth today.

Adobe charges a 1600 AUD premium because that is the very most they can possibly squeeze out of the "well, but, exchange rates and stuff" apologists like you.

Re:To be fair

[evanism]

Come on mate! We colour in our own wordy-books here!

Re:To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, exactly. The technical term for this is "getting away with whatever price we think we can", AKA gouging. Until our dollar was regularly at par or higher than the US dollar, you could make a long, long list of items that were 20 to 100% higher in Canada than in the US. I can understand a little bit higher to handle "international" customers. To meet some of the laws here (the most obvious being labels and instructions in both English and French, and perhaps CSA approval for electronic equipment), it might cost a bit more. There are taxes and tariffs too. But some of the cost differentials were and still are implausibly ridiculous (like +50% to +100%). They charge more because they can. Now that online services are available, and the rough parity of the dollars makes it obvious we are getting ripped off, all of that is being undermined. It's about fricking time.

Meanwhile, our high dollar makes all our products more expensive, which isn't a good thing unless all you want to sell is oil. It's gutting our manufacturing industries. :-(

Revel in your low dollar, USA companies. It makes your product more competitive. Putting up the price for international customers kind of defeats the point. You *are* getting paid a reasonable price, and the market, being what it is, will find a way around the "international" price premium if it is too high.

Re:To be fair

[lazybeam]

I remember Trumpet Winsock (you know, the software that actually let you get online with Windows 3.1x) was written in Australia, and they didn't localise for the US market. There was an item in its help page addressing complaints about the "misspelling" of "dialler". :-)

Oh and we paid through the nose for an Adobe Connect license (for a client): turns out it doesn't support timezones +1000 or above. WTF!?! The extra money they charge is utter and pure greed, nothing more. They don't use it for anything like actual testing in the target market.

Re:To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

And you'll notice 'industry'/google/bing is all about control of content these days. They are going to make it so if you are in another country you won't get to easily find how much your getting ripped off. They are in effect changing the 'world wide web' into 'region wide web'.

Re:To be fair

[chrismcb]

All you have to do is script 180 degree rotation on every page.

And insert "cunt" wherever appropriate^Wnecessary.

The amount of extra paper, because of this change, is probably where the extra cost comes from.

Re:To be fair

[jezwel]

As someone that spends several million aussie taxpayer dollars a year on software - the majority from companies from the US - I would find it highly advantageous to have software prices fluctuate based on exchange rates.

If you're looking for somewhere to cut costs out of IT (or help us be more productive) then you should support this inquiry.

Re:To be fair

[the eric conspiracy]

That's a problem between you and your politicians.

Re:To be fair

[the eric conspiracy]

The increase in valuation of the AUS dollar is due to sale of raw materials internationally, mostly coal to China. Once China gets it's shale gas fracking going I think that will tail off quite a bit.

Re:To be fair

[c0lo]

The increase in valuation of the AUS dollar is due to sale of raw materials internationally, mostly coal to China.

Iron ore even more than coal

Once China gets it's shale gas fracking going I think that will tail off quite a bit.

Can you do steel with shale gas? This aside, Japan imports from Australia 4 times more coal than China.

Now, get out of my paddock, mate.

Re:To be fair

[phantomfive]

until people said screw it and started ordering stuff from the US via backshop mailers who were willing to cut the price by $10.

This is part of the problem, Australia doesn't allow parallel importation of books at a scale that would make a difference (though it might be changing). This basically means the government gives permission to price fix.

Re:To be fair

[nedlohs]

Sure prices don't change instantly, especially for physical objects in which they've been paid for already and shipped to storage.

But using a 10 year old exchange makes no sense. The AUD:USD has been about 1:1 (obviously it bounces around - Australia is small and exports a lot of commodities making for relatively large short term changes) since Oct 2010.

Now clearly they can charge whatever they want to charge (and the Australian government getting involved is silly), but Australians are also allowed to complain about paying double what Americans pay for the same thing. And charging more makes sense - for products which actually have almost 0 marginal cost you want to sell them cheap in poor countries and sell the for more in rich countries.

Of course anyone with half a brain just buys it from overseas anyway - though that can make for some support issues for some items.

I guess the government could try passing laws that say something along lines of: "If you sell a product in Australia that offers support then you must also support instances purchases overseas that are under an equivalent support offer in the country purchased from". Of course there are huge issues with language differences and feature differences and as you tighten up on that the producer making subtle differences to the Australian version just to trigger them being not equivalent. Now I don't actually think that would be a good idea.

Re:To be fair

[microbox]

You're obviously trolling.. but 1 AUD is 1.047 USD

The US dollar wont recover because of the debt situation. Devaluing the dollar is one way to deal with debt. Printing money, and causing inflation, is another way. (Think quantitative easing.)

The US dollar fell during the Bush years, after profligate spending coupled with large tax cuts. But the fundamental problems in the US economy were already there.

It is entirely plausible that the US dollar could fall further; however, currency rates are always relative, and the US dollar should gain against the Euro in the coming years.

Re:To be fair

[the eric conspiracy]

The Aussie dollar has already taken some hits as China's infrastructure investment growth rates and therefore iron ore growth rates are tailing off.

All those LNG investments are looking dicey too as Shell etc are starting up shale gas development in China.

Better spend a bit less time in that paddock.

Re:To be fair

[microbox]

If the US only produced domestic cars, then your response might be reasonable. However, if the USA is going to export one car, (or import parts from one other country), then they will need to deal with the metric system. Furthermore, regarding left-hand drive, it is used in Japan and the UK, which are huge markets.

What you have said is so absurd... perhaps it has more to do with cognitive dissonance then anything else.

Re:To be fair

[Samantha Wright]

There is a bit of justification for price gaps on that scale, though, especially for physical objects. I was working at a bookstore when the parity occurred in 2008. Transit costs and higher store operations costs play a role in it, since the books are published in the US, and both property taxes and minimum wage are (generally) higher here. Also, as far as I know, most publishers just got books with new covers printed that only had the Canadian prices on them. You'll still get royally screwed over for $20 to $30 per hardcover if you shop at Chapters-Indigo-Coles.

Re:To be fair

[AK Marc]

They may be the largest, but they are less than 33% of the China export market and falling (last I saw was about 20%, but I'd rather be conservative and right than be bothered to look it up again right now). The US needs China more than China needs the US. When China agrees with that statement, the US will collapse.

Re:To be fair

[AK Marc]

I started my US account in the US, and get apps from the app store as an American (I still have a US credit card and US billing address). That was worth the trouble for the "free app of the day" alone. But I can't get http://www.amazon.com/Playtex-Spill-Proof-Cup-Replacement-Valves/dp/B00005BSAC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335725470&sr=8-1 shipped out of the US. I have no idea why. They don't sell it here, so I can only assume I'm stuck with one of many things I've found. There exists a franchisee/importer with rights to it who chooses to not sell it, so there's nothing I can do. The US Amazon also refuses to sell me any books electronics or games. I have a US Wii, but can't buy games from Amazon. Books are cheaper from US than UK, but haven't had any of those work, either. In fact, I've never managed to buy a single thing from the US Amazon since moving, but I have bought from the UK Amazon. I think the US Amazon just has tighter controls. They claim they ship internationally, but the 10 times I've tried, they've never accepted the order or shipped me anything.

Re:To be fair

[Mashiki]

Yeah don't remind me. I'm pretty sure next car I get will be "imported" from europe.

Re:To be fair

[waveman]

> Nearly every company in Australia registers for GST, so the government made it extremely simple.

As someone who has had to comply with GST I can tell you this is not he case. My accountant told me that it would be cheaper and easier to just pay the gross GST and forget about claiming GST on inputs, because that would mean I no longer had to file GST returns.

GST has turned into a nightmare of complexity. If you doubt this, read the GST updates published by the Taxpayers' Association.

Re:To be fair

[freman]

I concur - it's probably with the extra $1.6k you could FLY to the US, have an effectively free holiday pick up a copy of the software while you're there, and come back

Re:To be fair

[batkiwi]

What's hard about it?

You keep your tax invoices and enter their total into a web site quarterly. There is no "this applies, this doesn't." If you are GST registered, and you paid GST on ANY ITEM, you can claim that GST as an input.

It could not be simpler.

Re:To be fair

[batkiwi]

-It's a serial key download. There is NO distribution cost apart from bandwidth costs.

-There is no local support. It's a local number which redirects you to india, just like every other american tech company provides.

Any other thoughts?

Re:To be fair

[bane2571]

On the US dollar issue: When we were at $0.5 AU to $1 US, AAA games were $100. Now we are $1 AU to $1 US AAA games are $100. If the game was priced in USD, then the price doubled. I'll probably be spending more than that for Diablo 3 because of taxes and I'll be buying that through digital distribution, getting the same copy as everyone else.

It's more marked with expensive products, but we really do pay significantly more for software here in Aus.

Re:To be fair

[batkiwi]

Would you prefer if your price of petrol/gas was doubled and kept that way for 2 years, rather than changing week by week depending on your exchange rate to source oil companies and the going price of oil?

Re:To be fair

[Kalriath]

How do you think New Zealand feels? Our cheese costs twice here what it costs in London. The same cheese.

Re:To be fair

[Kalriath]

No, it doesn't explain the markup. Specifically, why it exists.

And actually you're being quite disingenuous talking about manufacturers adjusting their prices. Since no, manufacturers don't - they charge the same no matter what to anyone anywhere in the world and it's the distributors that determine the local price and adjust accordingly. The only exception to this seems to be Movies, Music and Software, where the manufacturer sets the prices per region at some vastly inflated rate and refuses to adjust, ever - and contractually prevents distributors from acting unilaterally.

Re:To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Taxes. No, really. Luxury car taxes.

Re:To be fair

[kiddygrinder]

If they hadn't been so greedy people wouldn't want it in USD. they broke the system, not us.

Re:To be fair

[Kalriath]

Software distribution is handled by, shockingly, software distribution companies like Tech Pacific or Ingram Micro.

... or? You know that those two are the same company right?

Re:To be fair

[bakdor]

The price ends up so low because there is no demand - the steering wheel is on the wrong side.

Re:To be fair

[Rennt]

To be fair, it's mostly our Government ripping us of with cars. Massive excise taxes on anything brought into the country are supposed to protect our precious local car industry from collapse (if Commodores and Falcons had to actually compete with Euro and Japanese cars on an open market there would be no Commodores or Falcons.)

This is why so many people buy cars in NZ and ship them to Aus. You end up paying 30%-50% less.

Re:To be fair

[jyx]

Australia has a GST tax. Just figuring out if you are liable for this will cost you a bundle. Collecting it and dealing with it from Chicago will cost you more in terms of staff time, and hiring work done in Australia.

Oh sure. It's real hard. If you are you selling it in Australia then you add 10% to the price and send that in to the government. If you are selling it outside of Australia then you do nothing. Wow, that's so complicated! All software qualifies for the GST making it even simpler to work out.

(Agreed with everything you said except for this bit)

As an ex small business owner, I can say that it may be 'simple', but its not easy to work out. Remember, its not 10% of the selling price - its 10% in addition to the selling price - so internet sellers now need to present a different price based on location..

GST allows you to claim input credit based on the cost of doing your business. So companies can effectively claim a reduction in the amount of gst they pay to the govt. (Simply put, if I sell you a grommet for 100$, I collect an additional 10$ from you for GST. If I spent 40$ for the widgets I used to make the gromet I can I can claim the 4$ GST I spent on that widget and only pay the govt 6$ of the 10$ I collected). Multiply that by every single thing/service you sell and the paper work gets to be a hassle.

Unless they have sourced materials/services from Australia, in which case I guess they should be able to claim them, the overseas companies are now at a disadvantage because their already selling price incorporates the local taxes paid on the product being sold: In the spirit of GST they should be allowed to re-coup those taxes but they cant - unless we get all of the US to register for ABNS as well)

This has to be done every 3 months if you are a small business, or every month for larger business (based on turnover).

Now factor in every country has its own tax codes, so now exporters have to keep up with all regulations from all countries.

Now factor in currency transfer fees? Who pays - and at what rate?

Now philosophise over the whole concept of 'taxation without representation' - When you purchase from overseas you are purchasing from an entity that cant vote in AND doesn't not participate in living within the laws of the government collecting the cash. I'd call that state sponsored theft.

So much for the global economy and free trade. A tariff by another name is still a tariff. Id actually be happier if the government said 'You know what, fuck it. Anything bought into out country gets a 10% tariff paid by the importer - no exceptions'

Re:To be fair

[c0lo]

The Aussie dollar has already taken some hits as China's infrastructure investment growth rates and therefore iron ore growth rates are tailing off.

If you'd like to call yearly variations of 9% as hits and rebounds back to the average level as tailing off... then I guess you are right. After all, it's just a matter of terminology, like in "you say potato, I say potahto" so, to be fair... let's call the whole thing off, shall we?

Re:To be fair

[Max Littlemore]

There is an implied freedom of association in the constitution. You just need a lawyer who's up on the relevant bits of the law and the laws themselves would be thrown out.

Re:To be fair

[Max Littlemore]

My accountant told me that it would be cheaper and easier to just pay the gross GST and forget about claiming GST on inputs, because that would mean I no longer had to file GST returns.

Let me guess, you pay thr GST to him and he hands it all on to the ATO on your behalf?

You need to get a competent accountant and perhaps look into your record keeping....

Re:To be fair

[Max Littlemore]

You're trolling!!! 1 AUD is1.0451 USD...

Seriously, who links to a dynamic exchange rate as justification for calling someone a troll?

Re:To be fair

[Max Littlemore]

We're talking about software here so it all attracts 10%. In most cases we're talking about electronically distributed software. So your arguments are irrelevant.

The only relevant two are GST applying in Australia but not elsewhere and currency exchange fees.

These are handled in two ways. One is to set up an Australian subsiduary (a PO Box and one of those professional services shells) that handles the GST and banks the money in AUD. When there is enough, transfer it in in bulk overseas for 1-2% fees. Another is to sell software online in the US in USD. This attracts no GST the customer pays the currency exchange fees, and there's no need to display a different price based on location.

The trouble is the sites already do display a different price based on location and the price displayed for Australia is far and away more than the price for the US for no other reason than they can get away with it.

Also, no wonder you're an ex small business owner, they way you do the figures for the GST. The GST on something you spent $40 for is $3.63.

Re:To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Woooosh

Re:To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what you mean to say is "Australian made cars sell at a loss in the US".

Re:To be fair

[Techman83]

With have a subsidised/protected automotive industry. All it does is artificially inflate prices. GM/Ford still come crying to the government for handouts every few years.

Re:To be fair

[waveman]

> What's hard about it? You keep your tax invoices and enter their total into a web site quarterly. There is no "this applies, this doesn't." If you are GST registered, and you paid GST on ANY ITEM, you can claim that GST as an input.

Two things (among many) you left out.

1. I have to divide all costs into rebatable and non-rebatable costs. In the case of my self-managed super fund not all costs are rebatable (eg capital costs, and certain other costs).

2. The rebateable costs are then rebateable at different rates depending on the category. Again I need to divide the costs into these categories.

Don't get me started on rental properties and property developments. Here is a tiny snippet of the verbiage you have to navigate

"First limb of the Statutory Definition
Premises that have not been previously sold as
residential premises and have not been the subject of
a long term lease (defined in s195-1 GST Act as a lease
of at least 50 years or a period reasonably expected to
be at least 50 years) except if for the period of at least
five years since the premises first became residential
premises, the premises have only been used for making
input taxed supplies of residential rent"

I then need to do a return on a quarterly basis and a final return annually.

Re:To be fair

[waveman]

No I pay the other service providers and don't claim the partial refund that DIY super funds are entitled to because it is not worth the time and effort involved.

Re:To be fair

[waveman]

Here is some more about this "simple" GST

When real property is sold, consideration needs to be given as to whether or not the sale will be subject to GST.
A sale of residential premises is input taxed to the extent that it is to be used predominantly for residential
accommodation; s40-65(1) A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Act 1999 (the GST Act) however sales of
new residential premises by a GST-registered vendor constitute a taxable supply (although may be subject to
the application of the margin scheme discussed below); s40-65(2)(b) of the GST Act. New residential premises
are defined in s40-75 of the GST Act, however uncertainties surrounding its interpretation have necessitated
reliance by taxpayers on Tax Office rulings, principally, GSTR 2003/3: Goods and Services Tax: When is a Sale of
Real Property a sale of new residential premises? This article considers the Tax Office view of when residential
premises will be new residential premises for GST purposes as well as the Governmentâ(TM)s proposed legislative
amendment following the recent decision of Commissioner of Taxation v Gloxinia Investments Ltd as trustee for
Gloxinia Unit Trust [2010] FCAFC 46.

Re:To be fair

[Ghaoth]

And people wonder why pirated software exists. If a company tries to rip of the public, then the public will try to rip off the company. It's a fundamental law of human nature. Stuff Photoshop, use the Gimp.

Re:To be fair

[rgbrenner]

the parent said the USD was 1/10th AUD... which is blatantly false.

Re:To be fair

[blind biker]

Oh, sorry, didn't notice your reply: good point! In fact, I was going to write

And insert "cunt" wherever appropriate^Wnecessary^Weverywhere.

Re:To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess it's time to move back to England then, Wallace. How's Gromit?

Re:To be fair

[Sir_Sri]

I specifically linked the microsoft jobs page for australia. Have a look, sales and legal. Thanks not reading my self admittedly horribly written 3am post.

Re:To be fair

[Sir_Sri]

You're arguing that the costs for Adobe/Microsoft's Australian operations effctively double to price of the product they sell. Well, as an Australian business customer I fail to see any value-add from Adobe or Microsoft having an Australian presence -

so right off the bat you've started with a false premise, well two actually. First, I didn't say australian operations double the price of the product. I said the nominal (exchange rate) conversion of australian to USD dollars doesn't reflect a change in purchasing parity. 900 AUD in 2003 won't buy 2x as much in 2011. In fact if you look at the PPP rate, you're only marginally better off.

Secondly, you said you don't see any value add from MS. Adobe I can't speak to specifically, but I even linked the MS jobs page. Thanks for reading. I know my 3am post has some gibberish in there that makes it hard to read, but if you want to sue them, or if you get audited for compliance that's all local. All of the rules they have to follow, managed locally, etc. etc. etc.

Since I manage software for a reasonable sized company we get our licences via a reseller, and download the media, so we don't use their software distribution chain, anyway.

You actually just spelled out in your previous paragraph how you connected to their chain. They have to supply the reseller. Hence all the sales gigs at MS australia. The more layers in the chain locally, the more of the sales costs is tied to Australian dollars.

If you manage software for a living you should know more about this process than you do. You can't discount the costs of building licencing systems (automated or otherwise) for australia as somehow free. Even if that development work is done in the US they have to do it in consultation with a legal team in australia.

For support. I'm surprised their business support would be outsourced, especially adobe. Consumer support sure, but business support that's surprising, around here they subcontract a local company to do it (business support only though). Even then, they have to *have* and asia pacific call centre that you can link up to, and the cost of that in AUD hasn't changed. The problem is that the US dollar has fallen relative to everything, not that the AUD has risen with nothing else having a similar effect.

I'll reiterate: You have a false premise, that the price has doubled. It hasn't. Unless your pay has been cut in half to compensate for the change in dollar value what you're seeing is that every step of the chain people who were paid 100 AUD were still paid 100 AUD, and so the US specific cost, which was maybe 100 or 200 dollars (of a 500 USD purchase, or in 2003 900 AUD purchase) may have gone down a bit, accounting for the drop from 900 to 850 AUD. But everywhere else on the chain is still people being paid in AUD.

I would estimate, as a professional software developer, that about half the costs of the software are point of sale/local currency. Which means the fixed cost cost was about 250 USD. (Which was 500 AUD, and is now 250), and the remainder is made up for with local currency. At that point you're into problems like currency volatility, when contracts are written, etc. etc. I'm not saying you aren't getting a bad deal, but is no where near as bad as you presented it, and that's normal for anyone not doing business in the US.

Re:To be fair

[Max Littlemore]

And this has what to do with the uniform GST on all software exactly?

Re:To be fair

[Pseudonym]

I think pretty much everyone worked out that it was hyperbole.

Re:To be fair

[moss45]

I didn't mean it was 'simple' as in anyone could understand it, I meant the actual process for processing the GST is simple. It would take about three or four hours for an Australian tax specialist to give Amazon the appropriate advice. Costs for setting up a GST system is extremely low compared to the kind of revenue Amazon pulls in.

Re:To be fair

[gmanterry]

Yes, exactly. The technical term for this is "getting away with whatever price we think we can", AKA gouging. Until our dollar was regularly at par or higher than the US dollar, you could make a long, long list of items that were 20 to 100% higher in Canada than in the US. I can understand a little bit higher to handle "international" customers. To meet some of the laws here (the most obvious being labels and instructions in both English and French, and perhaps CSA approval for electronic equipment), it might cost a bit more. There are taxes and tariffs too. But some of the cost differentials were and still are implausibly ridiculous (like +50% to +100%). They charge more because they can. Now that online services are available, and the rough parity of the dollars makes it obvious we are getting ripped off, all of that is being undermined. It's about fricking time.

Meanwhile, our high dollar makes all our products more expensive, which isn't a good thing unless all you want to sell is oil. It's gutting our manufacturing industries. :-(

Revel in your low dollar, USA companies. It makes your product more competitive. Putting up the price for international customers kind of defeats the point. You *are* getting paid a reasonable price, and the market, being what it is, will find a way around the "international" price premium if it is too high.

Hey, you Canadians could lower the value of your dollar too. Just elect a President (Pime Minister) who decides when he takes office that he will run the money presses 24/7/365.25/4. Your dollar will go into the crapper too.

Better beaches

[rjames13]

If we lose the better beaches tax does that mean that New Zealand has better beaches than us?

Re:Better beaches

[Anonymous Coward]

the fact is that they do have nicer beaches, and there are no box jellyfish or crocs to worry about. but the downside is that the water is colder which means you (and the opposite sex) need to wear a wetsuit. it's a difficult one to choose between.

Re:Better beaches

[socceroos]

Come to Tassie. Better beautiful beaches and no box jellyfish. No crocs either. Also, they're all completely empty. Plus, if you stay here for 10 years you begin to acclimatise to the sub-zero temperatures of the water. ;)

Re:Better beaches

[Max Littlemore]

Australia != Northern Australia. The beach within walking distance of here has, like most Australian beaches, never had box jellies or crocs any where near it.

Devils Advocate

[Kawahee]

I went to purchase Diablo III from Blizzard's online store, and after signing in to my Australian (or SEA or whatever region) battle.net account the price went from US$Price to AU$(Price+20).

I tried to play devils advocate on this one, and what I came up with is that bandwidth and rackspace in Australia are much more expensive than other parts of the world.

But I get the feeling Blizzard don't have battle.net servers in Australia, and since most of their content delivery comes through Bittorrent (and who cares if they "seed" it themselves from the US with cheap bandwidth or AU), so I don't know why it costs so much more.

Re:Devils Advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

I know why they don't. You can blame Telstra, who tried to F them in the A over space and bandwidth.

They found it was cheaper to keep the servers in the US

Re:Devils Advocate

[grim-one]

The SEA servers are in Singapore IIRC

Re:Devils Advocate

[fostware]

Local Distributors have the final say.
The local software box movers / local arms of the game publishers have higher overheads, sure but not that much that affects digital distribution.

Classic example is CoD:MW2 is $89.99AUD or $19.99USD in their respective zones.
SteamPrices for CoDMW2

There's also no chance of settings up an office in another state to get around taxes, like some other country we all know ;)

And while there are $/GB charges, as an example Steam has at least 5 CDNs in Australia with four of them on Non-Telstra peering exchanges.
Not to mention the Akamai CDNs in every state, CacheFly, LLNW, and EdgeCast.
Although according to this (WhingeWhirlpool - July, 2010), maybe the disties aren't the only ones rorting the system:-
"With Akamai via vps.net its now 15c/GB, for Australian customers its 20c/GB (in USD). Signup with Akamai Australia direct and its around $1.80/GB."

Re:Devils Advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

There's more than one hosting, and network provider in Australia, than Telstra, they could of sought as an alternative.

Re:Devils Advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite right.

You never play on US servers when in Australia, no matter what the game is unless the local SEA(South-East-Asia) division doesn't have English (usually HK and Singapore have English, and Philippines, Japan, and Korea may also support English.) This is more about latency than anything else, as playing from AU to the US results in more than 200ms of latency, which makes realtime combat with US people impossible.

Likewise playing on EU servers from the US.

Basically the case in the world where the price differential makes no sense at all is in the US versus Canada. Canadians can very well cross-border shop, Aussies can not. So you see this price differential in everything, with the closer you get to the US border, the cheaper the prices become. When you order online, you get fleeced however, so you're better off digital-downloading everything when possible, as the US and CAD price for digital is almost always identical.

In Australia however, this is nonsense, why is the download version any more in Australia than it is in Canada or the US?

Adobe is just one example of an absurd price differential, but it's not limited to just Australia. You need a US address to use the US iTunes store which has more content than the Canadian and Australian stores. And indeedly this is a problem because taxes are applied based on the type of account.

Ideally, purchasing online would not incur any kind of price differential, and paying with US cards (or US denominated cards) would avoid the entire exchange bruhaha anyway. Australia is required to have taxes included in the price, where as in the US and Canada it's not. If the US and Canada had the same kind of sales tax laws, you'd instead see different prices for every state and province.

The ideal solution is to show US prices always, and then subtitle with the local cost including taxes if known. If the taxes are not known, then leave it in USD. But the regional restrictions are still extremely annoying, with some content not being available to Canada or Australia until years later or even never. In these situations you're basically telling foreign customers to pirate it, because the region restriction prevents you from buying it. If something is potentially illegal or "unrated" then simply put a warning that the content is intended for US customers and foreigners can buy it at their own risk.

Re:Devils Advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

You never play on US servers when in Australia, no matter what the game is unless the local SEA(South-East-Asia) division doesn't have English (usually HK and Singapore have English, and Philippines, Japan, and Korea may also support English.)

dumb and wrong.

Likewise playing on EU servers from the US.

also dumb and wrong.

Re:Devils Advocate

[tqk]

You're quibbling with details, nothing more:

This is more about latency than anything else.

Damned straight. I'm not even a gamer, and I get this. Some manager decided latency from AU to $wherever wouldn't work, the dork.

Re:Devils Advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

It is because they (publishers) sign non-compete clauses with Australian retailers saying they will not undercut their recommended retail prices. The retailers will not stock their games if they do not sign these agreements.

Why Australian retailers find it necessary to charge $20 extra for games is something worth questioning, but it sucks that publishers give in to them. If all the publishers decided that they wouldn't put up with their crap, it would leave the retailers with no choice but to comply (they have to stock some games).

Re:Devils Advocate

[sg_oneill]

Rackspace is more expensive, for sure. But We're talking a few extra cents, not $20 , for a game.

Largely the costs in hosting in australia are not bandwidth related (although some colos do charge stupidly for that) but power related. Because of the ridiculous price in power lately due to all the grid updates (no its not carbon price, that hasnt been introduced yet!) power is just stupidly expensive and that translates to expensiveness in rack hosting since a 1U rack can chew up quite a good few amperes of power and then some more for air conditioning (which is a huge part of rack hosting costs).

So generally when your getting your stuff priced in rack hosting , at least in supply-your-own-box stuff the biggest component of the billing has a tendency to be power related.

I cant wait for the NBN to be fully cranking so I can just host my box at home on my own 100m/b fibre with some grey-box diy server.

Either way though, I dont think that really is what the costs are. CDs + DVDs are also ridiculously priced despite usually being manufactured overseas in cheap asian pressing plants, and bandwidth/hosting has nothing to contribute to THAT cost.

Re:Devils Advocate

[dbIII]

and what I came up with is that bandwidth and rackspace in Australia are much more expensive than other parts of the world

Which is unfortunately irrelevant because Blizzards "Oceanic" servers are all in racks in the USA.

But I get the feeling Blizzard don't have battle.net servers in Australia

There's been articles about the servers being in the USA, (can't remember where and the first page of google only shows complaints on forums), but either way a quick ping will show you that wherever they are there is half a world's length of wire and fibre between your net connection in Australia and where their servers are.

However Blizzard are just one of many that is price gouging by location. Apple used to be so bad at it that people could fly from Sydney to Hawaii to buy a laptop, spend a weeks holiday, fly back, and still have change left over from what they would have paid to buy it locally. That may be hardware with real shipping costs but the real shipping costs would be a tiny percentage of the markup.

Re:Devils Advocate

[dbIII]

Because of the ridiculous price in power lately due to all the grid updates

That's the story, but when the profit announcements come out each year you'll see it's due to the "profit updates" instead.
For those outside of Australia, the truly insane thing we did is copied our electricity trading system wholesale from California at the height of the Enron debacle. It is operating as designed with rising prices for the consumer and crumbling infrastructure - but mostly fatter and fatter profits each year in a monopoly situation.

Re:Devils Advocate

[complete loony]

I think that optus used to route to blizzards SEA servers via the US. But not all ISP's do. The recent Diablo III open beta highlighted a similar issue with Adam Internet, as an unexpected surge of UDP packets on a weekend, on a previously unknown port didn't play well with their packet prioritisation.

Re:Devils Advocate

[prowler1]

And I worked for a company that thought they could move the South East Asian data centre to the UK based on your assumption. Guess what, that extra 200-300ms latency caused job queues to blow out by a good 1-2 hours during peak times since the system wasn't able to get and process the jobs in a reasonable manner since all the timings were based on a LAN environment.

Management decided that all we needed to do was buy fatter pipes which took a number of network engineers some time to explain to them that fatter pipes does not equal faster speeds since the system slow down was latency and not band width based.

It's all about horses for courses. Just because latency doesn't affect you, you can not assume it does not affect other people or complex systems.

Re:Devils Advocate

[tqk]

And I worked for a company that thought they could move the South East Asian data centre to the UK based on your assumption. Guess what, that extra 200-300ms latency caused job queues to blow out by a good 1-2 hours during peak times since the system wasn't able to get and process the jobs in a reasonable manner since all the timings were based on a LAN environment.

If your environment is moving large amounts of data around in tiny slices, of course that wouldn't work. You need the data close to the crunchers or you'll suffer from network fragmentation. It sounds like that company got suckered by a smart talker who didn't bother to understand what the company was doing.

In IT, there is no one size fits all. You've got to understand what's being done and what's wanted to be done.

Re:Devils Advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

What really annoys me is that I can walk into JB Hi-Fi on the 15th of May and purchase a physical copy of Diablo III for $69 AUD, yet if I want to DL a softcopy directly from Blizzard i'll pay $80 AUD for the privilege. Where is the sense in that? Personally I'd prefer to download the softcopy and reduce the environmental impact of producing the packaging etc, but in this case Blizzard can go and get F'd.

Re:Devils Advocate

[dbIII]

The Oceanic servers are in the USA and not in Singapore with the SEA servers, but anyway I was just pointing out that since Blizzard are not paying for Australian rackspace then that cannot be used as a justification for a price markup.
It's truly bizzare that a Singapore owned ISP is routing via the USA to Singapore, but of course it all depends on how much they have to pay to use each cable.

Champion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also champion of the internet filter that was being pushed on Australians.

It's not as simple as you think

[Crypto Gnome]

I can accept the argument that it costs more to deliver a digital-download to "the rest of the internet" vs The US of A (due to many and various special deals cut by content providers) but not that much more. Especially for something like a song/album/movie or whatever where there is literally zero customisation for the geography or nationality of the end-consumer.

The worst part is that this pricing disparity is heaping insult upon injury.

Not only do we pay more than US based customers, but our downloads are often objectionably slow due to the inherent lesser throughput as a result of US based content hosting.

Seriously folks, when are you going to MAN UP and host some servers in Down Under Land? The NBN is coming, end-customers will have 100Mbps links, and you will NOT BE ABLE TO PROPERLY SERVE THEM.

Re:It's not as simple as you think

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the time we settle for an en_GB translation. For a 50% reduction in price I'm sure people could deal with such atrocities as centering or colorizing.

Prices are what the market will bear

[23940823908235908]

We Australians pay high prices for a simple reason - our market can bear the prices. The strong Australian dollar coincides with higher wages and costs of living, and any professional who needs photoshop will buy it, albeit begrudgingly. Adobe provides discounts for students and other groups, but the prices are still quite high.

This is basic economics: charge as much as possible to each customer, also known as price discrimination.

The same goes for "luxury" cars. Let me give an example. Here in Australia a new BMW M3's recommended retail price is $154,000 AUD. In the US, it is around $60,000 USD. Government taxes, extras, shipping costs, etc only account for a very small percentage of this difference. How does BMW sell any cars in Australia? Enough people are willing and able to pay the price.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[Anonymous Coward]

Difference is, digital providers are playing with fire seeing as their products scarcity is artificial. Consumers don't look too kindly on being ripped off.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[pfarber]

Your economics are 180 out. The strong AU dollar should buy you MORE American product, not less.

Unless (like Zimbabwe) there is a $1 Trillion dollar note that's good for a loaf of bread?

Setting an artificially high (or simply made up) value on a product is not what 'what the market can bear' but more like a monopoly abusing its power.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[LordLucless]

How does BMW sell any cars in Australia?

Because importing a BMW from the US is a pain in the butt; not to mention, the car would then have left-hand drive, which Australian customers are unsued to. On the other hand, routing a download from the US, or spoofing an online service into thinking you're buying from the US is trivial.

Also, you can't torrent a BMW.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[jonwil]

Your BMW example isn't the best example as that BMW M3 will have both import tariffs and fees (designed to protect what is left of the local car manufacturing industry) and luxury car tax (introduced by the Howard government in order to ensure the difference in the tax rate between luxury cars and normal cars remained the same under the GST as it did under the old wholesale sales tax system)

Lets look at a better example:
Take the LEGO Star Wars Super Star Destroyer. In the US you can buy one for US$399.99. To buy one in Australia you would need to pay AU$699.99.
Thats $300 more here in Australia than it is in the US. Is it any wonder more Aussies are importing everything from toys to books to car tires from overseas?

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[outsider007]

According to wikipedia US per capita income is well above AU, being topped only by Norway and a few city states.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[larry bagina]

Most BMWs are made in Germany (hint: Bayerische Motoren Werke = Bavarian Motor Works = BMW). Only the X3, X5, and X6 are manufactured in the US, but they're also manufactured in Austria, Mexico, and Russia.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[bertok]

It's not just the tariffs or the taxes. How do you explain that even cars made locally in Australia cost more than the same model in New Zealand? They have shipping costs, taxes, and tariffs too, yet a locally made car somehow costs more here!

I just found an informative page for importing a car into Australia. It has a worked example for importing a car worth $56K into Australia. The total payable tax plus tariffs is $11.5K. Doesn't exactly account for a BMW going from $60K to over $130K, does it? Where the hell did the other $60K increase in the price come from?

I once worked as an IT contractor for a car importer that had an exclusive deal with a manufacturer to import cars into Australia. I asked one of their senior staffers why cars were more expensive in Australia. He basically admitted that all of the importers jack up the price because they have an effective monopoly position (for their brands), and can get away with it. There's a sort of gentleman's agreement between them to maintain this status quo and not compete on price. This works because importers often import several brands, so there's only a few of them catering for the entire market. It's not the taxes, the shipping, the retailers, or the manufacturer. Nameless middle-men obtain exclusive rights to import, and then milk the market for everything that they can.

It's blatantly obvious if you know what to look for. For example, I wanted to get a nice sporty car, like the Nissan GT-R. Here in Australia, it's over double the cost of what it is in Japan or in the US. I worked out all the taxes, and it still didn't explain most of the difference. I looked into importing one direct from Japan -- I'd still have to pay all of the Australian taxes and tariffs and pay an additinal overhead for organising the whole thing, but the end result would still about 30-40% cheaper. However, it turns out that I wouldn't be be able to get my imported car serviced! The "official" importer also controls all of the parts and servicing, and they'll refuse to do business with you if you own a "grey" import. You can have it serviced elsewhere, but with a small-volume model like the GT-R, it's a risk. Compare that to, say, buying an iPad in America. Apple will repair it for you in Australia happily.

There's no way to do the equivalent in America because the market is too big, there's too many importers, and hence there's enough competition to prevent a successful collusion from forming.

This is why I don't buy anything except food and clothes from local retailers any more. I get all my gadgets and software online. Lots of other Australians shop online from overseas too. It's probably harming our local businesses, but fuck them and their greedy price gouging.

It's about time the ACCC started investigating this. First software, then I hope they look into cars next...

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[Anonymous Coward]

Per capita income is prone to gross distortion by outliers.

Look at median.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[LordLucless]

Ok, I mean importing for a private individual. Companies have economies of scale, trade agreements, offshore assembly, etc etc to reduce the actual cost of importation.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[outsider007]

Similar. USA is still on top.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[flyingfsck]

AFAIK all lefthand drive BM Wobbleyous are made in South Africa. So the Auz Beamers are actually imported from SA.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[Anonymous Coward]

And then flipped upside down to be right hand drive cars?

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[qxcv]

Also, you wouldn't torrent a BMW.

FTFY

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[Anonymous Coward]

What you looked up for 11.5k was the total payable at customs.That is only a fraction of what it will cost you to import a vehicle. We get ripped off here, but you are deluding yourself if you think you are going to get the car registered and on the road here 30-40% cheaper by importing yourself, that is if they even let you import what you want as there are plenty of local protection systems in place that prevent you from purchasing new cars and importing them if they are available here.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[Hognoxious]

Your economics are 180 out.

My economics is singular.

Setting an artificially high (or simply made up) value on a product is not what 'what the market can bear' but more like a monopoly abusing its power.

Bullshit. Nobody is forced to buy. If a BMW is too expensive there's a Merc showroom over the way. Or, god help you, buy a Holden.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[dbIII]

Your economics are 180 out. The strong AU dollar should buy you MORE American product, not less.

That's the above posters entire point!
It should but it doesn't.
Instead of paying the equivalent of $60,000 US ( ~$57700 AU) people are paying $160,000 US - truly insane price gouging. Of course the dealers pretend to cut people a good deal below the recommended price but it still ends up as an insane markup

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[Antonovich]

This is very similar to what was happening in France with mobile network charges. You LITERALLY had a spokesman from one of the three "historical operators" (incumbents, those who actually own physical networks as opposed to virtual operators) say when challenged by a journalist on the margins they were getting - "it's not how much it costs us to provide the service but what the consumer is prepared to pay". Needless to say, the three have been fined many hundreds of millions of euros for price collusion over the years. The result? They paid the fines - it was still far more profitable to pay the fines and continue to charge extortive prices. Then earlier this year the famous "fourth operator" arrived (mobile.free.fr). Overnight they revolutionised the market. People routinely have had their bills halved, or at least have a significant reduction in cost and significant increase in services provided/included (like free tethering, 3x data, unlimited voice, etc. thrown in,). The business model is different - you buy your phone outright (though they do offer rent-to-own which makes the difference pretty small) and there are no minimum contract lengths. There is basically no customer service but the difference here in France between "full customer service" and "no customer service" is pretty small anyway (don't get me started!). All the others have followed suit. The comment made by the CEO of the 4th operator "even at these prices we are still making a very healthy margin". The ONLY thing that matters is proper competition. Whether that happens naturally by a company being prepared to make only reasonable profits (as opposed to ridiculous) or by the government making sure it happens is probably pretty irrelevant. Software is a hard one though - most people are zombies and just use what is fashionable (Windows anyone?)...

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[MoonBuggy]

If what you just said is accurate, what I just heard was "Start a luxury car importer, undercut the competition by 15%, profit!".

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[gl4ss]

it buys more american product.

but it it buys it for the bmw import license holder, not for the guy buying the bmw.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[gl4ss]

I think you missed the part where car import deals are dealt exclusively and unofficials are treated with hostility by the official service chain.

sure, you could source your cars from uncooperative overseas dealers I suppose, but it's a big hassle. and then the troubles of not being able to use their trademarks in marketing material etc.. who buys discount luxury cars anyways? if they do then they buy them used. and I'm pretty sure australia has couple of businesses bringing used luxury cars from japan.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[rssc]

If only it were that simple. I know of a similar situation in Europe, where a car dealer in country A had the same idea, and started buying cars from car dealers from country B just across the border (where they were significantly cheaper) and sold them locally with a significant discount. What then happend was that the car manufacturers threatened to stop selling cars to any car dealer in country B who sold cars to the car dealer from country A. I am not even sure how you could go after car manufacturers legally, considering that this is happening in a different country.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[drsmithy]

Your BMW example isn't the best example as that BMW M3 will have both import tariffs and fees (designed to protect what is left of the local car manufacturing industry) and luxury car tax (introduced by the Howard government in order to ensure the difference in the tax rate between luxury cars and normal cars remained the same under the GST as it did under the old wholesale sales tax system)

No, the LCT doesn't even come close to explaining the price difference.

It's just flat-out gouging by BMW (Mercedes, Audi and the super-expensive brands like Ferrari, etc, do the same).

Some Euro brands do not do this - for example, Volkswagen. Their cars cost basically the same in Australia as they do in the UK. I believe Volvo are also quite competitively priced in Australia, but since they don't have any vehicles I'm interested in I don't know any specific examples.

You are mad to buy any of the luxury Euro brands in Australia - BMW, Audi, Mercedes, et al. They're just reaming you with 20-150%+ markups over other countries.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[drsmithy]

What you looked up for 11.5k was the total payable at customs.That is only a fraction of what it will cost you to import a vehicle. We get ripped off here, but you are deluding yourself if you think you are going to get the car registered and on the road here 30-40% cheaper by importing yourself, that is if they even let you import what you want as there are plenty of local protection systems in place that prevent you from purchasing new cars and importing them if they are available here.

Then why can Volkswagen sell a VW Golf R here for basically the same price as the UK, but BMW's 135i and Audi's S3 cost ~40% more (that's just one example, the price differential is pretty constant across their entire lineups) ?

Note that the prices for these cars in the UK are all within a few hundred quid of each other.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[thegarbz]

Your BMW example isn't the best example as that BMW M3 will have both import tariffs and fees (designed to protect what is left of the local car manufacturing industry) and luxury car tax (introduced by the Howard government in order to ensure the difference in the tax rate between luxury cars and normal cars remained the same under the GST as it did under the old wholesale sales tax system)

Funny one of our work mates went and imported 5 BMWs. Kept one, sold the other 4, and the proceeds basically paid for the one he kept. Sure it was a major amount of paperwork and hassle to get it done, but he effectively ended up with $60k profit as a result.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[c0lo]

Also, you can't torrent a BMW.

Yes, you can.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[Cimexus]

Yep, though note that that table is using PPP (which is a fair way to look at things, as it considers the actual buying power of the local currency rather than just its exchange rate).

However if you do find a table listing median incomes by country based on pure exchange rate, AU currently kicks the crap out of US (due to the current AUD:USD exchange rate which is much higher for the last few years than it has been for many decades). Having said that, it's not really a fair way to compare things.People make more money in AU than the US on average (using current exchange rate to compare), but the cost of living is also higher, so that doesn't really mean that Australians have that much more disposable income to spend on things. I've lived in both countries for extended periods of time and in my experience it balances out to about the same (I made a bit less in the US than in AU, but most things were a lot cheaper).

Best of both worlds is if you can get paid in AUD while living in the US, as a few of my friends do ... lucky bastards.

Re:Prices are what the market will bear

[Anonymous Coward]

Guy I know did exactly this with books. Didn't go public or anything, was importing books for himself, friends and family, so very low volume stuff. But he had a website and stuff like that to make it easier, plus I'm guessing he found it an interesting thing to set up.

Anyway, the Australian importers (the guys screwing the public) somehow got wind of this and complained to the US exporters and the US exporters cut off his supplies.

Now he gets all his books from bookdepository.co.uk

Good

[sapphire wyvern]

Excellent. I'm sick of the exploitation of software pricing in Australia. Price ratios haven't shifted at all since the 90s when the AUD was worth 0.6 USD. Now 1 AUD > 1 USD.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

+5 Insightful

this is exactly why australian prices are what they are. not taxes or tariffs or upside-down-country-loading.

just an outdated ratio that's profitable to not fix.

Re:Good

[complete loony]

The worst offender IMHO is steam pricing. Since on steam the prices are quoted in USD, but are still 30-60% higher. Heck I can buy some steam games over the counter for less than the online price.

Re:Good

[sapphire wyvern]

Yeah. Not all the publishers do it, though. Valve is an "enabler" for the other publishers to screw Aussies, but they don't actually seem to do it themselves as far as I can tell - Portal 2 was only $50 AUD at launch, which wasn't unreasonable.

I choose not to buy any games that are use predatory pricing on Australians. I'm just not ever going to spend $90 on a game and refuse to support publishers who engage in that sort of behaviour.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

No you can't.
If you used a proxy to the US you would see the true US price and it is much cheaper than you can find in any store in Aus (although when a store trys to clear its last few copies they might make a deep discount to get rid of something).
A lot of people have alternate US based accounts to gift games to their Aus Steam account, its probably a Eula violation if they could ever prove it but it will save you a hell of a lot of money if you play a lot of games.

At least Valve seem to have moved to a decent Aus price, its the other publishers (notably activision with their COD plague) helping to prop up prices on AUS Steam. Valve don't set the price on things they don't own.

Don't expect anything to change unless they are forced to.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, my personal gripe:
Razer Mamba wireless mouse on razers global store: $123 USD
On Razers Australian store: $189.99 AUD, when the AUD is worth more than USD, thanks Razer!

Just more BS

[registrations_suck]

Oh come on. By what magic force should a company charge the same for a product (accounting for PPP) throughout the world? Maybe companies charge more in certain parts of the world simply because the people living there WILL PAY MORE! I'm going to go out on a limb and take a guess that medicines cost less throughout the world than they do in the U.S. (for various reasons - none of which are important). I'm sure that no one in places such Australia would offer to pony up more money if they learned their (fill in drug name of choice here) costs a lot less than it does in the U.S. If you're willing to buy (whatever) for twice the price of your neighbor, you can't really blame me for selling it to you at that price.

Re:Just more BS

[crutchy]

only reason why many drugs in aus are cheap is because of subsidies like pbs

Re:Just more BS

[drsmithy]

By what magic force should a company charge the same for a product (accounting for PPP) throughout the world?

Actual free trade. Hence the reason so many corporations (and their pocket Governments) hate it.

This is already happening in Australia. Local retailers are getting smashed because so many people are buying everything from socks to laptops from foreign sellers.

Re:Just more BS

[Cederic]

By what magic force should a company charge the same for a product

In the EU it's illegal for me to import branded goods from Asia that I paid full retail price there for, so that I can sell them for a 100% profit here while still undercutting the brand's wholesale prices here.

I don't mind companies finding a price that the market will bear. I have serious issues with companies using legislation to prevent me competing with them by arbitraging on their own prices.

If you're willing to buy (whatever) for twice the price of your neighbor, you can't really blame me for selling it to you at that price.

If you're willing to charge my neighbour half the price, don't fucking complain when I nip over to his house and pay the price he's paying.

It's called Capitalism! Get over it!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called capitalism! Get over it! Use GIMP, Paint Shop Pro, or something else. If you don't like GIMP, pay someone to write something better.

Prices are already insane there

[Bruce Perens]

There seems to be a duty on "luxury" items or something. An inflatable camping mattress that would have been less than USD$30 was AUD$130, and other prices in the camping store were similarly crazy. If you're outfitting as a camper there, you can probably save by flying to the U.S. to buy your stuff.

Re:Prices are already insane there

[mjwx]

There seems to be a duty on "luxury" items or something. An inflatable camping mattress that would have been less than USD$30 was AUD$130, and other prices in the camping store were similarly crazy. If you're outfitting as a camper there, you can probably save by flying to the U.S. to buy your stuff.

No duties on most items, Almost everything that is not alcohol, tobacco or has a motor has GST only (Goods and Services Tax, a flat 10%). Camping gear is no exception, no special duties on it what so ever.

It's distributors profiteering. With tax, a $30 item in the US should cost $33, maybe you could stretch that to $40 with shipping. Yet Distributors price it at a 100% or greater mark up compared to the US prices.

BTW, smart Australians are already buying from overseas. Shoes, clothing, computers, electronics games and movies are cheaper to buy overseas (via the internet) and import. Items under A$1000 can be imported GST free. This is something the retail dinosaurs in Australia hate as it means people aren't paying 3-5x for the same products as much in their stores, they've gone as far as suggesting a special Internet tax to try to drive up prices online.

Re:Prices are already insane there

[cheekyboy]

If its high priced, blame the high rents shop have to pay, because of the greed of bankers ironically lending more $ , driving up realestate prices.

btw, they are $30 in au, check here http://www.aussiedisposals.com.au/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=230&osCsid=2ede5ca184907bbedd1e18cd3112eebd

Re:Prices are already insane there

[Anonymous Coward]

Cars DEFINITELY do have additional taxes, Luxury car tax, plus tarrifs and inspections/conversion to meet Australian registration requirements. That is not to say we aren't ripped off, but it most definitely is not as simple as just GST for many goods.

Re:Prices are already insane there

[drsmithy]

With tax, a $30 item in the US should cost $33, maybe you could stretch that to $40 with shipping.

It's not shipping you need to account for (most of this stuff is going to be coming from Asia anyway, so shipping to Australia should be cheaper), it's the higher wages and better working conditions in Australia, and the insane rents vendors have to pay thanks to our world-leading real estate bubble (last time I checked, Sydney had the most expensive commercial real estate *in the world*, beating out places like London, Paris, Zurich, New York and Tokyo - how crazy is that ?).

(Side note: when this finally pops - and the consequent economic catastrophe has passed - the reduction in rents should go a long way towards normalising prices).

Personally, I'm prepared to pay up to about 15-20% premium to support the local economy and living standards (in as much as buying imported goods from local vendors can do that). However, the problem is that prices here aren't 15-20% higher, they're 50-100% higher.

Re:Prices are already insane there

[mjwx]

With tax, a $30 item in the US should cost $33, maybe you could stretch that to $40 with shipping.

It's not shipping you need to account for (most of this stuff is going to be coming from Asia anyway, so shipping to Australia should be cheaper), it's the higher wages and better working conditions in Australia, and the insane rents vendors have to pay thanks to our world-leading real estate bubble (last time I checked, Sydney had the most expensive commercial real estate *in the world*, beating out places like London, Paris, Zurich, New York and Tokyo - how crazy is that ?).

(Side note: when this finally pops - and the consequent economic catastrophe has passed - the reduction in rents should go a long way towards normalising prices).

Personally, I'm prepared to pay up to about 15-20% premium to support the local economy and living standards (in as much as buying imported goods from local vendors can do that). However, the problem is that prices here aren't 15-20% higher, they're 50-100% higher.

Wages, costs and rents (higher in Oz) is kind of what I meant, I guess I didn't elaborate enough.

I agree with you about paying a small premium to support the local economy, but we're being shown how much distributors are taking the piss when Australian businesses are drop shipping cameras from the US and Hong Kong for half the price. I'm not just talking about web stores, JB HiFi is doing it and their prices are easily within 20% of web stores in Asia and the US. With that price, JB is paying Oz wages and Oz taxes, just not greedy distributors.

Re:Prices are already insane there

[psiclops]

One could argue that a car has a motor and is thus exempted from what GP said had GST only.

Re:Prices are already insane there

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason the proertpy bubble in Australia will decline [same with rental rates] is with a massive increase in housing, as the prices are high becuase of a lack of supply, not simply artificial inflation of prices. Build 300,000 new houses that people want to live in and the prices may drop otherwise we are in for the long haul and they will only go up.

Re:Prices are already insane there

[drsmithy]

The only reason the proertpy bubble in Australia will decline [same with rental rates] is with a massive increase in housing, as the prices are high becuase of a lack of supply, not simply artificial inflation of prices.

This is incorrect. Outside of a few isolated areas (generally to do with the mining boom) there is no real shortage of housing (more than sufficient housing to contain the population growth has been built over the last ~15 years, and Victoria in particular is looking down the barrel of an enormous housing oversupply at the moment). This is why rents have risen only marginally faster than inflation, while actual house prices have vastly eclipsed it, and the bubble has been nation-wide, rather than constrained to a few small supply-limited locales (as it has been in Canada).

The real culprits behind the housing bubble are lax lending policies, property development restrictions, and a tax system substantially biased - primarily via negative gearing and CGT concessions - towards speculation on real estate.

The bubble will burst because the driving force has been people's ability to easily borrow too much money (a consequence of the global, multi-decade credit bubble), which is rapidly disappearing. The same thing will happen in Australia that has happened everywhere else a real estate bubble has burst so far - Ireland, most of the US, etc - and for the same reason: easy credit has dried up.

Build 300,000 new houses that people want to live in and the prices may drop otherwise we are in for the long haul and they will only go up.

In most of the country, house prices have been steadily dropping for 18+ months, with total decreases varying from 5-20% over that period. There's still a solid 40-50% to go (in real terms), however, before they're back to something resembling normal and sustainable. Hopefully, this happens in a short and very painful couple of years (like Ireland and the USA), rather than a long and still quite painful couple of decades (like Japan).

Re:Prices are already insane there

[Cimexus]

A good post and I fully agree. Just thought I'd provide an example though of one of the "few isolated areas" you mention where there is an undersupply problem and prices aren't really falling much, if at all.

I live in Canberra and we have the highest rents in the country, believe it or not (higher even than Sydney, insane for a small city of ~400,000 people). Property prices (to buy) are second highest by most counts (below Sydney, but not by much).

So OK, one reason for this the fact that the ACT has the highest average income in the country (so there's a bit of 'pricing what the market will bear' in there). But it's not the sole, or even dominant, reason. The problem is that the ACT government is extremely slow with its land releases. They offer a small bit of land to developers each year. The competition for that land is therefore intense, especially considering the ACT's economy and population is growing quite quickly at the moment in comparison to the surrounding States (NSW, VIC). Canberra is starting to come of age to an extent - as a city that's only been around for 40 odd years (it was basically a sheep paddock with a few scattered houses before the 1960s), and no longer the majority-public-service place it was during the 1980s and early 90s. So land prices are high, and house prices are high.

Note that I don't particularly blame the ACT Govt. in this case as they are being cautious with land releases due to the fact that Canberra will, within the foreseeable future, start approaching the limits of where it can actually grow to (it's already hitting the NSW border on the north side, it's limited to the West by terrain (Tidbinbilla and Brindabella ranges) and to the south by Namadgi National Park ... there's some opportunities to the east but would require destroying large parts of the Kowen plantation forests out there and the associated industry/profit that goes along with it). So they are trying to promote densification and infill in the existing footprint rather than releasing new land by the bucketload. Big winner in all this is the adjacent town of Queanbeyan in NSW, which enjoys significantly cheaper prices and is, due to the weird shape of the ACT, extremely close to inner Canberra (closer, in fact than most Canberra suburbs). Needless to say, it's growing very quickly compared to most other regional NSW towns.

About bloody time!

[old_kennyp]

This sort of Sh*%t has been going on far too long and is not only limited to software! Music, Video, Ipads and even to clothes and Shoes. Motorcycle parts anyone? How come I can buy a pair of Nike runners online in the US, and have them shipped here for 1/2 the price I can buy in the store here? they are made in Asia anyway, shipping costs should be the same Same applies to just about everything imported, Can buy online in the US cheaper than here.

Re:About bloody time!

[jonwil]

I know of people who have been able to get a set of 4 car tires bought from online stores in the USA, shipped to Australia AND fully fitted at a tire shop for LESS than it would have cost to buy those same tires in Australia. (and remember the shipping on car tires is expensive because they are heavy and bulky)

Re:About bloody time!

[mab]

That'll be tyres mate.

Here's to hoping - Europe as well?

[QuasiSteve]

There used to be a great document at http://www.amanwithapencil.com/adobe.html that detailed the situation in 2007 for the UK. Thankfully, there's archive.org

http://web.archive.org/web/20100702205054/http://www.amanwithapencil.com/adobe.html

Adobe even replied to some inquiries, and you can see some of their excuses in:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100526120202/http://www.amanwithapencil.com/adobe_spin.html

The UK, just as Australia and Europe, were - and still are (at one point it was even cheaper to get the boxed version than to get the download version) - basically being screwed over (and good luck checking that - their various international websites make it a pain in the ass to compare pricing) and the only reason for this is that the market will pay anyway.
Why? Because 1. It's Adobe's products. If you have an interest in them, you're probably in an industry where you have little choice, so you'd probably pay twice the price and limit yourself to some grumbling on twitter, and 2. you probably earn the price of these products back on just a handful of jobs, after which you'd only have to worry about the upgrade pricing.

It's one market I wouldn't mind Apple upsetting, not one bit.

Re:Here's to hoping - Europe as well?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one market I wouldn't mind Apple upsetting, not one bit.

Except Apple are MORE guilty in this than most companies, since they have deliberately structured iTunes, the App Store, etc. to entrench and exploit these regional price differences.

Expecting Apple to fix this is like expecting Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to speak out in support of Israeli settlements.

Before tax & after tax makes up price differen

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't seem to understand that in the US taxes aren't included in the advertised price. Also the US sales tax which is added on is lower than in Europe and much of the world. When you add 20% to a $50 USD item that adds another $10 USD to the purchase price. As a result the Australian price is now the equivalent of $60 USD. Now compare this to the after tax price of a $50 USD item in the US state of NJ. It's only 7%. So that US $50 price is actually going to cost the customer another $3.50 USD. If there is some one to blame it is probably the Australian tax structure which taxes purchases more than in the US. The US doesn't have a nationalised health care. Citizens need that lower price to pay for health insurance or they need the company they work for to sell more product in order to pay for the employees health insurance.

My company actually takes a loss when we ship to the EU from the UK because we don't tack on VAT and charge the same as if we shipped from the US. So while it costs us less to ship from the UK to the EU it actually eats into our profits. In reality it actually costs us even more because we need to pay someone in the UK as well. Ultimately we make significantly less and have customers accuse us of overcharging on shipping. Humorously.

Precisely one reason for higher prices ....

[whoever57]

... is that the market will bear it. All the claims about increased cost are bogus: the non-US sales are delta sales of software.

Software has a fixed developement cost (plus the localization), so if cost were the issue, customers in non-US locations should ONLY pay for the delta cost to develop the local version.

You americans are THEIVES!!!

[cheekyboy]

Comon now, you can sell stuff cheap in singapore, or to mexico, or to canada, but let it pass through one middle mad on its way to australia and that FAT asshole prick will bump up the prices 30%. Its like USA is so advanced , but asking it to ship products outside USA zones is like asking them to ship to mars or something. Yet UK/europe/asia, they can ship anywhere TWICE as quick. Why is it stuff from UK arrives in 1/3rd the time than USA stuff? Is it the DHS scanning 50 planes/hr ?

And adobe, screw your resellers, just sell your shit 100% online.

Resellers OFFER NOTHING in the internet world, sure in 1990 they did advertise and offer support, today none.

Re:You americans are THEIVES!!!

[Tjp($)pjT]

Lower your import duties and maybe the price will be closer to a real parity. And wait for the middle of the night to call all the support calls in. Stuff a hundred million more users into Oz then get back to me about the strength of the Aussie dollar being something important in Adobe's pricing model. Alternately we subsidize worse economies than ours, so while yours is going stronger you can subsidize ours ...

Regards shipping products, I can't get half the eBay Aussies to ship to the US at all, and when they do it takes 3-4 weeks ... So that shipping thing goes both ways. I got a package from Kazakhstan faster than any from Australia. So ... Buy from Amazon us. Get yourself a US credit card and buy it with that. Send it as a gift to yourself. Use the bank as the US remitter address. It will cost you a little bit each month for the account and a bit each time you fund it but _might_ work out to be a bargain in some cases.

Just make sure inland revenue or whatever the Oz tax agents are, get their due, that way you get to pay the import taxes directly! I wonder which Adobe CS6 package he was talking about ... You might also download the demo versions, then pay by US credit card (above) to get the registration code ... No shipping involved.

Re:You americans are THEIVES!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't want our stuff don't buy it. Use some crappy AU software some dingos made

Re:You americans are THEIVES!!!

[thegarbz]

Wrong train of thought. Australian import duties are quite low for most goods (alcohol and tobacco are exceptions). For the most part all you really need to do is pay 10% tax on a container load of goods.

But the problem goes way beyond. I ordered a camera lens from B&H in the USA. I paid $70 shipping. It was over $1000 so I paid 10% tax ($180), it arrived on the weekend so I got a double whamy of a customs good holding fee $50, and for some reason UPS charged me again for the privilege of customs delays $30. I paid a total of $300 to get this over the listed USA price and the end result was it was still $250 cheaper than the cheapest price I could find anywhere in Australia.

ebay thing? For that the problem is Australia Post. I received a faulty product from America. USPS shipping was $7 to get this thing slightly larger then a letter over here. The company asked to ship it back and I went to the local post office. Our post office said it was slightly too thick to be a letter, no matter we'll send it to the USA for $55. !!!!!!! My father is CEO of a direct marketing company here. They have some 10000 subscribers in the USA and they have worked out it is cheaper to get the letters printed in Germany and bulk shipped to Hungary where they get inserted into envelopes and sent via Hungarian Post to the USA than it is to print them themselves and ship them direct to the USA. Can't do it internal to the USA unfortunately due to some rules about the contents of the mailings.

This is Australia. Everything is upside down here remember? We enjoy getting raped in the wallet here mate.

Re:You americans are THEIVES!!!

[deniable]

Middle of the night? That's the USA, not Australia. The Indian call center is only a few hours behind our west coast. While we're at it, what import duties?

Re:You americans are THEIVES!!!

[ceoyoyo]

You're not alone. Americans can't figure out how to ship things anywhere outside the country. Half an hour from the border in Canada might as well be the moon as far as most American companies are concerned. Of course, they might have a point - last time a friend in the US tried to send me something via the US postal service it got returned, address unknown. The address was correct, it just had "Canada" in it.

Re:You americans are THEIVES!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Australia. Everything is upside down here remember? We enjoy getting raped in the wallet here mate.

Can't be helped... the drop bears would love raining on your head, but... see... everything is upside down, where d'you expect them to land?

I have a better idea...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Instead of this ad-hoc 'inquiry' nonsense, which is necessarily reactive and highly liable to regulatory capture, why don't we just adopt some of that 'free trade' stuff that assorted Respectable People tell us is so salubrious when the chaps who produce the products in question are shopping around for the cheapest inputs?

Absent legal barriers, arbitrage in software should cost next to nothing, especially now that much of it doesn't even come on shiny disks anymore. See to it that Australian customers can legally import goods from the location of their choice, and that middlemen can import goods from the location of their choice for domestic sale, and the price difference should collapse in a loud puff of nebulous whining about 'intellectual property'...

The whole notion behind the term 'grey market' is pernicious. It Should Not Matter whether the manufacturer/seller of a good is pleased by the ultimate destination of the goods they are selling. Yes, we would all like to enjoy perfect price discrimination. No, that isn't a good argument for letting us do so. In the absence of absurd restrictions on arbitrage, various pricing shenanigans, release-date bullshit, and other nonsense simply collapse.

Such restrictions would be one thing if they were applied evenhandedly, if the producers weren't already shopping all over the world for the lowest prices, laxest laws, and sweetest tax breaks; but they are not. You want cozy protectionism for your retail prices? Well, perhaps you shouldn't expect to enjoy worldwide free trade on your input prices... You want worldwide free trade for the things you buy? Well, that's nice, you deserve no less than worldwide free trade in the things you sell.

Re:I have a better idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Free trade? What are you, some kind of communist?

Re:I have a better idea...

[ceoyoyo]

"why don't we just adopt some of that 'free trade' stuff"

Canada has had free trade with the US for more than a decade. There's a picture in one of our history books of my grandfather protesting against it. It only applies to corporations. Individuals still get to pay duty, and the corporations aren't likely to pass on any of the savings.

Re:I have a better idea...

[Cederic]

I completely agree with you.

You want worldwide free trade for the things you buy? Well, that's nice, you deserve no less than worldwide free trade in the things you sell.

That's the single biggest flaw with globalism right now. I have no issue with using cheap production to reduce the cost of goods and raise the standard of living in other countries. I greatly resent people in those countries enjoying a quality of life that I can't afford because they can buy the same luxuries at significantly lower cost while I'm prevented from enjoying those same benefits.

Re:I have a better idea...

[phantomfive]

Instead of this ad-hoc 'inquiry' nonsense, which is necessarily reactive and highly liable to regulatory capture, why don't we just adopt some of that 'free trade' stuff that assorted Respectable People tell us is so salubrious when the chaps who produce the products in question are shopping around for the cheapest inputs?

Australian law prohibits parallel imports for many items, which is why that solution won't work.

As someone else mentioned, Canada used to have a similar problem, which was solved by parallel imports. Which Canada doesn't prohibit.

Re:I have a better idea...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That was my intended point: Allow(and, where necessary, legally facilitate) free parallel importation('free' as in 'subject to the same import standards as anything else, regardless of whether the manufacturer likes it or not, not as in 'all laws abolished') and watch arbitrage annihilate any excessive price differentials in short order.

Creating, and then attempting to restrain, monopoly entities is a very, very, tricky problem. On occasion, it cannot be avoided(electrical transmission systems, water piping, etc.); but parallel imports are a case where it would be trivial to allow anybody who so wishes to import goods legally purchased elsewhere, subject to no restriction beyond the import duties and standards that apply to all. Especially as Australia is an English language market, that should crush most attempts to price-discriminate pretty robustly.

Re:I have a better idea...

[phantomfive]

Oh, your point wasn't very clear.

It's the problem of protectionism. They are trying to protect Australian authors, but it raises prices for everybody.

Re:I have a better idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Free trade stuff?

Wait you mean those agreements we were forced to sign which made our medicine more expensive in Australia for the benifit of American drug companies?

I think we just burn them at the stake and be done with it, it used to be a so much more effective a deterent in the old days.

Re:I have a better idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if you're trying to be funny but Australia DOES have a free trade agreement with America, which has been in force since January 2005. It just doesn't seem to be doing anything useful for Australia.

Re:I have a better idea...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It is my understanding that making a free trade agreement with the US is just the diplomatic equivalent of kissing the Don's ring.

It is certainly possible that somebody on your side will receive assistance with some problems that they may have been having; but it's a show of fealty, not a contract of equals...

latency is high, why not sinapore

[cheekyboy]

Singapore has Amazon EC2 servers, is closer to AU for low latency, so why cant they have servers there?

Yeah telstra run by idiots who couldnt figure out how to reduce costs if they were even told how to. Outdated, and over paid managers.

Re:latency is high, why not sinapore

[tqk]

Outdated, and over paid managers.

It's a worldwide phenomenon. No need to blame any Australians on that account.

Re:latency is high, why not sinapore

[aristedes]

Actually the latency from Australia to Amazon's Singapore datacentre is quite a bit higher than to the US West coast datacentre. If you look at a map of undersea cable runs, you'll see that Australia has actually quite a bit more low latency and high bandwidth connections to the USA via Hawaii and Guam than through south-east Asia.

With significant new cable coming online later this year, connectivity to the USA is only going to get better.

Re:latency is high, why not sinapore

[Anonymous Coward]

Same way Centrelink is run. Chock full of managers who are paid too much to do not much. Surprising the number of people who work in Centrelink who have nothing to do.

I am surprised that there is not an enquiry into this.. but it would be damn difficult as everyone covers everyone else's ass. Huge waste of public money though.

aussies can do it

[cheekyboy]

Us aussies can sell software to usa cheaper, and bandwidth is not an issue, we find ways to do it fast, get closer proxies etc...

Should we start naming companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

The number of companies doing this is probably greater than people think. Form personal experience:

Apple

Microsoft (check the price on Technet for US vs AUS customers)

VMware (check the price of Workstation, Fusion, etc. on their web site)

Various goods purchase via Digital River

The number of companies doing this, and the extremely lame excuses the put up (only Microsoft will discount if you point the issue out and ask nicely for a better price).

Re:Should we start naming companies?

[Nursie]

Apple?

I don't own any apple stuff, but whenever I've done price conversions between the US and Australian prices on the Apple website, they've been pretty close. I don't think you can point to apple on this one. Maybe third party resellers of Apple stuff?

Re:Should we start naming companies?

[drsmithy]

Apple currently look ok because they recently did a currency adjustment. Historically you'd be looking at a solid 30-40% price difference between buying the same Apple product in Australia vs the USA (even after accounting for local USA sales taxes).

"Should" is not "must"

[Pecisk]

I wonder how do you push vendors and resellers to set price government and voting nation would like in capitalism. Because, it's like, unless it's monopoly (and CS can be replaced with other software for some cases), they can do whatever they want and *you* have rights to ignore them, too. Come on, where's the problem?

Or current regime is not capitalism, but some kind of twisted "we all do right thing unless we doesn't like the outcome" in all cases (there are valid reasons when gov. have rights to say "stop", but this is not one of them).

Re:"Should" is not "must"

[Anonymous Coward]

I think your making the mistake of thinking that Australian laws are fair and just to companies like American laws are. In Australia we have incredibly draconian protections for the public, and consumers, bodies like the ACCC. When a company goes too far they get slapped the fuck down and made to beg for mercy if they don't say thank you for the privilege.

"Or current regime is not capitalism"

Australia while appearing capitalist is a far more nuanced political beast, considering thats it would be, on an American scale at least, considered a socialist/communist democracy. Frankly only a fool would allow unbridled capitalism run rampant within their society.

Re:Before tax & after tax makes up price diffe

[cheekyboy]

A USA $50 retail item did not cost the NJ store $50, they bought it for probably $30 WHOLESALE.

So what I am saying, is why cant the Australian retail shop, buy USA products wholesale at the same wholesale price as the little tiny shop in the small town in NJ.

This is where we aussies are pissed off, retailers/shops dont buy things RETAIL, but WHOLESALE. And their wholesale prices from usa are either too high, or there is only ONE single importer that they must buy from at 2x wholesale price.

Look today, the PS3 in AU is close enough to USA price, but 2 years ago it was like 2x difference before sony got a clue. http://www.shopbot.com.au/m/?m=ps3

But software, that takes zero space to transfer, should cost the same, always by law or call the WTO.

Check yourself before you wreck yourself

[sleeponthemic]

Already I can see a few uninformed individuals making giant assumptions or just outright "ooh crybabies!" posts. This issue is just one an aspect of the maelstrom of distributors vs retailers vs customers in Australia.

If you don't live here (in Australia) and think Australians should be charged (quite often) upwards of twice the price for things.. Fuck off and die in a house fire. You're a bad person. Well, no, that's not exactly true, what you are is a dick with an opinion (that is wrong). Please educate yourself or die in a house fire - your choice. Should I work twice as long so I can experience the same product as you? Obviously not. Prices should most definitely be sold with "economies of scale" in mind, yes. Do you have $90 US games? We do. Skyrim, for instance - and that's through digital distribution!

The ultimate question is always this. Why can I have "some guy" on ebay in the UK ship me 1 single copy of a game through snail mail (expensive) to Australia and still end up paying 60% of the price of the game, locally. Why? how is that possible? It can only be possible because somewhere in the market we are getting fucked over. There is no other reason. If I can buy 1000 copies of a game, I can get a better price. SomeGuyInABedroomOnEbay98 can trump the entire Australian retail sector walking into a shop in the UK (and just so you know, the UK are also victims of this gauging) and paying for a SINGLE UNIT to be shipped to Australia.

But, we're evolving. Even the previously unsavvy commoner is going online to get a better price - We're just buying stuff from people around the world, that realise they can exploit this gauging themselves. And thank (whoever) for them ! Thank you! Please, feel free to get on board. Ship the products bought locally to us! Meanwhile, the retailers are seeing diminishing sales, crying foul and attempting to have us taxed, so they can continue to exist without evolving.

The key point in here is that there is always someone either gauging or offsetting their shitty distribution chain management onto the customer. A guy on ebay can beat them. Distributors and retailers will have to evolve. One of the mechanisms that will facilitate this is by mandating that prices in this country MUST be justifiably so.

Re:Check yourself before you wreck yourself

[ausrob]

Quite right, it doesn't add up. We used to be the last "1st world" marketplace for goods (typically, US/Europe/Asia then us), and we'd cop the original RRP (or new release price) for it to boot. Some things never even made it to Australia (sold out in other regions). So yeah, unless you actually live or have lived in Australia (or another place which has had the same experience) you don't know what you're talking about.

It used to be that we, as consumers, could short cut the price gouging by buying direct (from Amazon.com, etc) and having to cover the international postage (which was still WAY cheaper), despite things like DVD regions (don't get me started on that bullsh*t). Sometimes this was the only option when said thing/movie/TV show wasn't made available for sale locally.

Manufacturers have wisened up since those days and now impose export restrictions on sites like Amazon e.g. can't buy a DLP Projector on Amazon and have it shipped to a non-US address, or can;'t use an Australian-issued Credit Card as payment. Those manufacturers want you to pay the local price from *their* distributors (often double overseas prices). This also goes for services - e.g. I couldn't book train tickets in Europe online with an Aussie-issued credit card, had to book locally at twice the price.

It gets more hypocritical when we start to discuss digital sales when many of the aspects of handling physical products no longer apply. I'm glad this is finally coming to light, most Australians I know are fed up with the constant price gouging which has been going on for decades.

Re:Check yourself before you wreck yourself

[PPH]

This also goes for services - e.g. I couldn't book train tickets in Europe online with an Aussie-issued credit card, had to book locally at twice the price.

Some of this has to do with subsidized services. Trains are backed by taxes paid by the local residents. So they take that attitude that those not paying those subsidies should be assessed the full cost of those services. And identifying such foreigners by their credit cards is one method of filtering them out. So, pay cash. If I were Visa, I'd fight the entire concept of cards with national identities. My customers carry one Visa card, they charge for local goods or services in the local currency, pay in whatever currency they choose (Visa handles the exchange rates) and the only thing the business needs to know is that they got paid. Wealthy people often bypass these non-resident policies anyway by maintaining bank accounts in various localities and having local credit cards issued from each.

Otherwise, I agree with you. If I walk into a store and buy your product, there should be one price. If that customer takes said product and takes it back home across some border, its none of your business.

Charge them more!

[Anonymous Coward]

That'll teach them for living in Ausfailia.

Re:Charge them more!

[Antarell]

That'll teach them for living in Ausfailia.

?? Where you born a dick or did you grow up to become one ?? Oh hang on, are you just jealous that Australia is still kicking along strong when the rest of the world including you little part is turning to shit? Is that why we get screwed, "they can afford it and prop us up" syndrome?

Re:Charge them more!

[Anonymous Coward]

?? Where you born a dick or did you grow up to become one ??

Neither. Somebody grew him as a dick... one can't reach such lows without grooming.

All thank the grey market arbitrage!

[sugar and acid]

In the end the only way to not get gouge in australia is to buy on the grey market from another country. Here instead of plowing through copyright laws by absolutely flouting them, you can bypass the arbitrary high price by going into the grey zone and buying from overseas resellers engage in arbitrage.

These companies have to get realistic, the government is already taking a dim view on this so it is unlikely, and the fact you have to go grey market often means it might be easier just to pirate the whole damn thing.

This is a massive competitiveness issue. Especially if it cost 2 times a seat to employ in world terms somebody in Australia than it does in the US just on software.

Governments don't like arbitrary things like that, especially if they can outlaw them....

Why buy Adobe products anyway?

[flyingfsck]

The Free software products are generally better and the price is right, so if Ausies pay more for Adobe products, then they have only themselves to blame.

Re:Why buy Adobe products anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely. The free After Effects clone we use at work (I work at a TV station) is absolutely stunning. It actually takes no time at all to boot up.

That may be the result of it not existing, though.

Re:Why buy Adobe products anyway?

[the eric conspiracy]

I wouldn't say they were generally better. In fact I'd say they were rarely better.

Re:Why buy Adobe products anyway?

[AdamJS]

What FOSS alternative for Flash/Flex is there? One that produces compatible formats (swf,flavor,etc.) of course.

Same question for Photoshop, as Gimp is rather kinda shitty. Most image editing software I've tried on Linux seems to get some HCI heuristic horrendously wrong.

Re:Why buy Adobe products anyway?

[PuZZleDucK]

After Effects clone we use at work (I work at a TV station) is absolutely stunning.

Minimalist design aesthetics eh?

Simple UI no?

Re:Before tax & after tax makes up price diffe

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been told by some friends in a music shop, that certain things like some guitars and amplifiers are being sold Retail in the US cheaper than the Australian Distributors can buy them from the Manufacturer

Some shops are now finding it cheaper to fly to the US, buy guitars Retail and bring them back and sell them as unplayed secondhand.

Protect small buyers at Apple's iTunes store, too!

[ivi]

I found a list of songs priced (presumably for the buyer in USA) at $0.99 each

When an Aussie went to buy some from within AU, prices jumped to $1.69 ea.

Calculus taught me that lots of DeltaPennies add up to BigBigs, eg, for Apple,
and I don't think it's fair to pay more outside USA than within, even for low-
priced items, such as songs.

Diablo III

[barv]

Arent battle.net giving that away if you prepay one year of WOW? (before May).

Re:Diablo III

[Kawahee]

Yes.

Re:It's called Capitalism! Get over it!

[crutchy]

only reason why someone would think any adobe graphics product is better than gimp and other foss projects is that they don't know any better. if you get fed your info from noobtards on slashdot, what do you expect. gimp is better

This is to compensate for the CSIRO WLAN Tax

[PolygamousRanchKid]

You reap what you sow.

Just kidding, Bruce.

Re:It's called Capitalism! Get over it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly a lot of this comes down on people hiring (or at least people screening potential employees). If you're looking for work in graphic design or at least front end web design in Australia you can almost guarantee that experience with latest adobe suite is required. Just as you can expect to be required to have experience with the latest Microsoft Office suites or MYOB software for a job in Administration or Office Support. That you can argue that your alternative is a viable substitute or better is besides the point if you don't get selected for an interview your point is moot.

That said though, I do agree that projects like Gimp and Inkscape have generally caught up. With respect to Gimp specifically I personally believe it is a viable Photoshop alternative for general image editing and the only real complaint I can make is the lack of layer grouping (coming in 2.8 though). :)

Re:It's called Capitalism! Get over it!

[ChrisMaple]

The newest version of gimp, in 2012, is still harder to use than the last time I bought Photoshop in 1998. And Photoshop produces better results.

Photoshop is a ripoff but Adobe's competitors are inexcusably bad.

Ob

[Hognoxious]

Australian consumers may finally see the end of being overcharged for software simply because they live outside the U.S. Minister for Communications

So, how much do people who live inside him pay?

Re:Ob

[PuZZleDucK]

We don't use software in here, the whole thing is run like a commune and we spend most of our days reciting verses from the Telecommunications Act 1997 and warming our hands against the golden light and life giving heat emanating from Mr. Conroys most sacred pancreas.

Re:It's called Capitalism! Get over it!

[crutchy]

probably right.

maybe one way around it could be to lie in the interview (tell them you know adobe), and then when you're asked to produce something, install gimp, do the work, then say that you produced it with the adobe garbage. the resulting work would be the same, and surely it would be pretty hard for management to argue about the software, considering gimp is free.

Re:It's called Capitalism! Get over it!

[crutchy]

this is a typical gimp rant... "gimp is crap cos i don't know how to use it"

gimp developers are probably glad that adobe targets their software at noobs, so that they don't have to

Re:Protect small buyers at Apple's iTunes store, t

[Anonymous Coward]

How about doing something to provide realistic alternatives to iTunes in Australia first? At the moment the only alternative is piracy, and the price sure beats iTunes.

Re:The Farscape rule?

[peted56]

Lucy Lawless is a kiwi but I think it should be done anyway.

between...

[johnsnails]

between dreamspark, bizspark and consumer previews... who needs to buy m$ sw anyhow?

Easiest way out!

[thexile]

Just pirate the software! NO DRM, no sales taxes to pay and you get it for free! So why not?

It's called a free market

[Registered Coward v2]

Sure, Aussies pay more because they will, and have the option to not buy a product if they don't like the costs. Conversely, should they be forced to pay higher prices if another US product costs more in the US than Australia? For example, should US companies be forced by US law to charge US prices for drugs to any buyer worldwide? Or, should Australian companies (or any any where for that matter) only be allowed to charge as much in their home market as they do in the US? Oddly enough, I can sometimes get products from Europe cheaper in the US than in Europe, adjusted for the exchange rate and VAT.

It's easy to argue for lower prices but the same argument applies to raising them.

Re:It's called a free market

[the eric conspiracy]

I think this is a good point. US prices are quite often lower than anywhere else in the world. There are several factors for this:

1. USD is world reserve currency. This means you don't have to convert currencies when dealing in almighty greenbacks on international sales.

2, US is largest monolithic market. 300 million high paid peeps all speaking same language in same political unit. Set up one call center and a warehouse in Kansas and you are good to go.

3. Low energy prices = low physical distribution costs.

4. Major volume and competition in distribution channels means they are efficient as hell. I hear rumors that someday the guy delivering your Amazon printed cardboard may arrive in an Amazon truck wearing an Amazon shirt.

I buy a lot of German made tools. From what I understand they are 30-40% cheaper in US than in Germany. I know these tools are 2x in Oz. I had the experience once of taking a Japanese electronics industry executive to Best Buy. He told me the Japanese brands were much cheaper there than in Japan.

There are some things we pay more for though - the worst of these is pharmaceuticals. Generally when that happens it's a government fuckup causing it.

Re:It's called a free market

[PPH]

It isn't free until I can cross the border and buy that product at the lower local price*. That means Australians should be able to purchase apps directly from US outlets. Plus the shipping, of course (which for on-line apps is exactly zero).

*We did this many years ago with a car, before the US dealers plugged that loophole. The price of a US spec Mercedes purchased in Germany was a lot cheaper than the same car in the USA. And that included shipping plus our expense to fly over, pick it up and drive around Europe for a few weeks.

Re:It's called Capitalism! Get over it!

[gl4ss]

I use gimp almost exclusively for my graphics tuning needs.

but the ui sucks bigtime. fwiw gimp doesn't seem to be targeted at pro's either. just for people who know that gimp will do one thing for them and they'll use it for that, like saving a png with transparency, scaling something, adjusting some color curve etc. 99% of the use it gets is just glorified converter tool work. very rarely you hear about anyone using it for "photoshopping".

Bout time Australia!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about time they fixed the price discrepancy. Bout time Australia!

champion of Australia's National Broadband Network

[Anonymous Coward]

"Minister for Communications Senator Stephen Conroy (champion of Australia's National Broadband Network)"

Have we forgotten that he's the guy who's been pushing so hard for censorship in Australia? I doubt he should be called the champion of anything.. at least here on slashdot.

Re:It's called Capitalism! Get over it!

[Anonymous Coward]

gimp developers are probably glad that adobe targets their software at noobs, so that they don't have to

Jesus fucking Christ, give it a rest and just let people work with what they're happy using. The rest of us don't want to hear about your crusade to prove that your choice of tool is the One True Choice, and everybody who disagrees with you is wrong.

Let people use what they want to use, stop trying to force them to your way of thinking.

Re:Before tax & after tax makes up price diffe

[SteveTheNewbie]

You do realise VAT is a tax you add then pay to the government so it doesn't actually affect your bottom line, right ? If you added VAT and then didn't pass it onto the government then you are ripping your customer off. (And possibly the government, depending on where the customer is located)

Re:champion of Australia's National Broadband Netw

[Dan541]

Senator Conjob is the champion of Nationwide Internet Censorship.

Not Just Americans

[medv4380]

I've never understood this, but Australia has been ripped on in the software side of things for a couple of decades now. Their is a Reason Nintendo was found guilty of Price Fixing. I thought originally it was just the Gaming Industry plotting against Australia, but from what Adobe is doing It seems more like it's the entire Software Industry that has a bone to pick with that little Island.

Re:Before tax & after tax makes up price diffe

[the eric conspiracy]

Obviously the reason for that is competition. The little NJ retail shop has to be close in price to Amazon, the largest retailer in the world.

In Australia they don't.

Re:It's called Capitalism! Get over it!

[Anonymous Coward]

then say that you produced it with the adobe garbage.

Won't help. See... they want the latest Adobe CS, not the adobe garbage

Re:It's called Capitalism! Get over it!

[Anonymous Coward]

jesus titty fucking christ, then adobe users should stop bitching about the prices they get charged!

consumers are notoriously fucking stupid; they want the world and expect to pay nothing for it, then when its offered they don't like it.

if you don't like my take on things, stfu and gtfo, moron

Senator Conroy

[Anonymous Coward]

Minister for Communications Senator Stephen Conroy (champion of Australia's National Broadband Network).

The champion for attempting to introduce mandatory filtering.

Re:Before tax & after tax makes up price diffe

[Anonymous Coward]

A USA $50 retail item did not cost the NJ store $50, they bought it for probably $30 WHOLESALE.

So what I am saying, is why cant the Australian retail shop, buy USA products wholesale at the same wholesale price as the little tiny shop in the small town in NJ.

This is where we aussies are pissed off, retailers/shops dont buy things RETAIL, but WHOLESALE. And their wholesale prices from usa are either too high, or there is only ONE single importer that they must buy from at 2x wholesale price.

Look today, the PS3 in AU is close enough to USA price, but 2 years ago it was like 2x difference before sony got a clue. http://www.shopbot.com.au/m/?m=ps3

But software, that takes zero space to transfer, should cost the same, always by law or call the WTO.

Posting AC because I run a specialist shop that sells imported items because we don't actually have Australian manufacturing any more in my line of goods and I don't want to annoy the people who decide what I can and can't get.

This is simplified, but it's accurate enough for a /. discussion:

Small retaillers buy from wholesalers, either because they can't afford to import a couple of containers of yellow plush widgets at a time or because the manufacturer has an exclusive arrangement with a wholesaler.

Wholesalers buy from their suppliers and then apply a margin before reselling to retaillers. This is how they stay in business. If the markup is excessive retaillers won't buy the product (even if the wholesaler is the only source).

There is fierce competition between wholesalers for my dollar (different wholesalers sell different brands). I don't believe they are colluding to fix prices. If you want to see the approximate price I pay (excluding GST) look up the US RETAIL catalogue - regardless of brand. I've been told several times by different wholesalers that a sought after line won't be coming to Australia because the wholesale cost (to me) would be much higher than the retail cost overseas.

Australians ARE being gouged, and it's happening at the level at which the wholesalers are buying, not selling.

Although GST is applied at every stage where an imported product changes hands it only comes to a total of 10% of the final cost so doesn't even come close to explaining why we pay too much.

Re:champion of Australia's National Broadband Netw

[PuZZleDucK]

Yeah. I think this is the first thing he's said all year that has not made me cringe... Still, you gotta celebrate the victories, however few.