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Why is so much software cracked?

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urlwolf:
But then UK Prices are generally up to 50% higher than US prices.
-Carol Haynes (June 18, 2006, 11:24 AM)
--- End quote ---

And the reason for this being? I mean, there is no shipping cost, no difference in material availability, no need for translation (if written in US-english)... I honestly don't know how companies can justify this.

Hardware is also %50 higher, but here I can see *some* reasons (shipping, smaller market, small differences -e.g. keyboard on a laptop....)

Rover:
And the reason for this being?
-urlwolf (June 18, 2006, 07:26 PM)
--- End quote ---
ummm..... EU taxes?

JavaJones:
Carol's response is very much along the lines of what I was thinking in reading Rover's posts. Great points by both, but I agree with Carol, we're talking in general about shifts in mindset and business approach here, so the change in software pricing is not occurring in a vaccuum and should be done along with other changes like creating user-to-user support services (forums, even hosted chat). These actually lower your support costs, so either your total support cost stays the same while increasing your user base, or it may even go down.

Now of course there are those users who wouldn't know to investigate the forum and other user-to-user support options, but if they're buying the cheaper product you will have fully made them aware of the limitations on official support, so there's really no room for them to complain.

I for one would definitely like to see more separate in support and actual development/production costs.

- Oshyan

Carol Haynes:
But then UK Prices are generally up to 50% higher than US prices.
-Carol Haynes (June 18, 2006, 11:24 AM)
--- End quote ---

And the reason for this being?
-urlwolf (June 18, 2006, 07:26 PM)
--- End quote ---

Actually it isn't just taxes - usually they are on top of the 30-50% hike.

The main reasons are:

1. Because they can (this applies to MS, Adobe and Corel). Exactly the same argument used for the silly prices of some of the products. I actually asked Adobe and Corel why they charged more in the EU and actually got a response. Both companies said "xxxxx in the UK is a totally separate company responsible for its own pricing policy" .... just a shame that the disc you receive aren't EU specific - we still have to put up with the US inability to spell English!!!

2. Because they think we are stupid ... you go to a page that says $399 and then in the checkout system they ask for your country .... oh look simple sums in the UK it is £399 + VAT (which is another 17.5%) .... of course UK people are too stupid to notice that in 2 clicks the price has gone up by about 40%. Some companies also charge too much for VAT! Different EU companies charge different rates. The UK rate is 17.5% but some companies (not the big ones mentioned above) charge anything up to 27% - which as far as I am concerned is illegal (fraud/deception/greed/lying bastards) and they don't have the right to make a charge to cover their tax collection costs - it is part of their legal responsibility for trading in Europe.

3. Almost all of the special offers on web pages for the big companies apply only to the US and Canada because they force others to use their local company.

Sony does a good one now - if you buy e.g. SoundForge you can get the software as a download product - but they only supply the soundeffects etc. on CD. Guess what - the CD costs nothing but they charge something like $40 to post it to the UK. This is a single CD in a card folder in a bubble bag - so the actually postage cost is probably under $4-5 by AirMail. To add insult to injury when it arrives all you get is a sampler of SFX in their collection and to do anything useful you need to spend more money on SFX compliations and postage. To be fair they inherited this practice from Sonic Foundry but there is no real excuse. They would argue that they post it with 48 hour delivery via FedEx - but they don't give any option - do they really need FedEx to post a CD sampler?

The final reason is that we live in ripoff Britain where everything is high (except salaries) ... I find it really amusing to hear Americans whinging about gas prices - petrol in the UK has been nearly 3x the price of US gas for years ... and then they wonder why UK business collapses in world competition. That's why I now speak to someone in Delhi when I try to call my telephone company (BRITISH Telecom!)

Sorry - this rant could go on for a long time and it would probably become quite political - so I'll shut up now ... :-[

urlwolf:
Nice post, Carol.

I live in the UK -previously lived in the US for 4 years- and this is news for me. How can an entire country ignore this? Can an economy be this inflated without offering anything of value in exchange?

One of the most important questions for me right now is to decide where I want to live/settle down. I'm an academic so I have quite a lot of mobility (I'm in that moment of your life where you have to settle in a place). This post helped me in that sense. If you have any more info/links on this phenomenon (that you call 'ripoff Britain' :) ), I'd love to hear from it (if it's not too political for this forum).

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