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Adobe Bows To Pressure and Cuts Australian Prices

Posted by timothy on from the fairish-dinkum dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Software giant Adobe has bowed to public pressure and slashed the price of some of its products for Australian customers a day after being ordered to front a parliamentary committee hearing to explain its excessive charges."

9 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. About time! by Gumbercules!! · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's ridiculously expensive to buy software in Australia. Most of it is purely digital and there's no justification. I hope the other vendors follow suite, soon. Overseas readers may not be aware that it's cheaper to fly TWO people to America and buy Visual Studio there, then fly back here, than it is to buy it here (link here if you think I'm exaggerating: http://theconversation.edu.au/cheaper-hardware-software-and-digital-downloads-heres-how-8382). That's just an example (I know Visual Studio is not exactly top pick on Slashdot but it's still got its place).

    It's much cheaper to buy games on Steam through a proxy - as in about 50% cheaper. It's just completely unfair and I'm glad someone is finally doing something about it.

    1. Re:About time! by Gumbercules!! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Umm, no... That's not what this is about.

      This isn't a taxation issue - it's an extortion issue. This is pure and simple that (predominantly) American companies double, triple and sometimes a lot more than that the price of digital downloads when destination == .au. Apple does it with iTunes, Steam does it with games. Adobe does it with whatever crap they're flogging these days and so do most of the rest. Hardware as well. When I hear Americans talk about $500 computers at "Best Buy" or whatever, I feel sick. The kind of people who buy computers at Best Buy in the US are the kind of people who pay $2,000 for the same thing, in Harvey Norman, here - and our dollar is worth more than the USD, so it's not exchange rates.

      Considering they're all assembled in China, which is closer to Australia, I don't buy that's it's a freight cost, either. It's long been known that IT companies just jack up the price massively if they're dealing with Australia because we've allowed ourselves to become accustomed to it.

    2. Re:About time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      You can legally get a refund for a game that does not work. You can legally sell your games. You can legally sell your account. All of these things are impossible in America.

    3. Re:About time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      >Apple does it with iTunes, Steam does it with games.

      I think you're trying to say "Valve does it with Steam", and even in that case, you're not right. Valve leaves the pricing on Steam up to the publishers, as long as they get their 30% cut. Valve's own games on Steam are pretty cheap.

      The publishers, in turn, say they have to rip off Aussies because they have legally binding contracts with brick-and-mortar stores (e.g. EB games) promising not to undercut them. If they went against that, they'd likely find all their physical discs dumped in the sea. For now, they still make most of their money from physical disc sales. What they'd really like to do is reduce the price by a fraction and sell vastly more copies to Australians, and they can't do that until the contracts expire or physical sales become irrelevant. At the moment, their main loss is savvy Aussies importing legitimate physical copies of the game from the UK for less than it costs to buy it in the shops.

  2. Re:Why so high? by Ironhandx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because they thought they could get away with it. For a long time they were right.

  3. good strategy by slashmydots · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That definitely makes them look not guilty.

  4. Australia and software are not unique by AlexOsadzinski · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While digitally-delivered software is an egregious example of price gouging, it's hardly unique. Sure, Australia is a long way away from most places and it's a very small market (about 22M people). So it's understandable that some goods will cost more, especially if they need local parts and supports: think cars, or even computers (but not bits). But, despite the pervasiveness of the internet, price differentials still exist FAR in excess of those caused by local taxation and tariffs and market sizes.

    The US has it very, very good indeed. Why does, say, an Audi cost 30-40% less in California than in Germany, after you remove taxes? Same car (modulo some safety marks molded into some of the parts and other minor differences), same warranty, same service. The only difference is that it spends a few weeks on a boat instead of a few hours on a truck getting to the dealer. Why do the same Chinese-manufactured clothes cost, in some cases, 3-5x more in Switzerland than at Macy's anywhere in the US? How come that Japanese cameras are 30% cheaper in the US than in, say, the UK, or even in Japan?

    I think that part of the answer is cultural. As an emigree to the US (22 years ago), one of the things that I first noticed was the national obsession with getting the best price on everything, almost regardless of personal wealth. Americans simply won't put up with price gouging. The clerk at Macy's will take some time to stack coupons and discounts for you to give you the lowest price. People actually negotiate the prices of many things with the seller, e.g. cars. In the UK, a favorite phrase was "if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it", which was a not-so-subtle tactic to make you feel somehow inferior for wanting a discount. And I will always remember the look on an American friend's face when, at a UK breakfast place, she asked for a refill of her (tiny) coffee cup and was told that it would be an extra 2 pounds. Try that at any restaurant in the US and witness the riot.

    The internet simply causes resentment and envy when people in less fortunate places browse US sites. A lot of people simply order from the US and deal with the customs and shipping hassles (and, sometimes, the lack of local warranty). My Swiss friends bring empty suitcases on trips to the US and fill them up at Best Buy and Macy's; the Swiss tax on bringing stuff in for personal use is very low. I saw one billionaire (literally) friend from Switzerland buy a box of batteries at Best Buy because they're so expensive in his home country.

    1. Re:Australia and software are not unique by Eil · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As an American, I'm proud of the fact that most prices here are negotiable. Sure, it means a little more work to buy the thing you want at a reasonable price. And honestly, it intimidates a lot of people who were raised to be non-confrontational. Whatever, they can pay the full asking price if that's what they want.

      You're right, it is cultural. There's a downside to having a low cost of living, however. You still hear just about everyone in the U.S. complain about the price of just about everything. Even while the poorest of our poor still have a higher quality of life than most of the rest of the world. Even if you're homeless and don't have a dime to your name, most cities have shelters where you can sleep and eat for free. (And even these cost too much to run because we effectively have _no_ public mental health treatment system, which is a damn shame. But that's a topic for another day.)

      Because luxury goods are so cheap (big houses, big cars, big computers, loads of cheap entertainment), most of the middle class spends money like they're millionaires. As a result they live paycheck to paycheck and don't save enough for retirement. And then they get outraged that social security is paying out less and less because hey, how are they going to afford to retire now that companies don't do pensions anymore? I'm looking out over the parking lot of the corporate building next door and about 10% of the cars are gas-guzzling sports cars while 40% of the cars are SUVs and pickup trucks. I'm betting almost none carpool. These people are burning up huge chunks of their paycheck before they even get it.

      Over the past few years, I've been listening to political news on the radio and it floors me how many otherwise normal, sane people seem to think that it's the government's job to provide them with stable employment and retirement. I'm all for social welfare progams that help the poor, but for christ sake, the middle class needs to wake the fuck up and start spending less while saving more. Instead of asking the government to knock on their door and give them even more money to waste.

    2. Re:Australia and software are not unique by AlexOsadzinski · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, that's another thing that I noticed when I came to the US: people have an enormous amount of stuff in their enormous (by UK standards) houses. Even after 22 years in the US, I still can't get over how much stuff is available, and how little it costs. Don't get me wrong: I like stuff. But it's overwhelming how much stuff there is.

      You highlight a real US problem, though: people not understanding the time value of money. It's not taught in the schools, AFAIK. This leads to living on credit (which is astonishingly expensive, if, like most people, you use credit cards) and living for "now" versus "the rest of your life". Try explaining to the average person that waiting a few months to save for something saves you 10-80% of the long-term cost (depending on how indebted you are). The classic symptom of this: a car dealer asking you what monthly payment you're looking for when you walk onto the lot. And there are insidious money-sucking prices in the US, too: what the average home spends on healthcare, mobile voice/data and cable/satellite is just incredible. And every marketing genius has figured out the recurring revenue model and many households fall for it, e.g. Sirius/XM for your car(s).