Peter Elst

This policy just is not sustainable. I wonder if Adobe realizes exactly how much goodwill it is losing year-on-year with this unfair pricing policy.

These differences are unbelievable!!!

@peter: pie charts aren’t the best visual presentation of the difference, a bar chart would be better

really, really strange

Maybe Adobe thinks Euro is cheaper than $$$Bucks$$$ and want to make same price for all of us :))

Fellow developers, it’s all about ROI…

NOT.

but while they fix it, can they also bring the price of petrol in line please?

Just wondering… Are these prices including taxes?

UK prices:

Master Collection CS4:
£2313.58
(£1969.00 ex VAT)

Web Premium CS4:
£1404.12
(£1195.00 ex VAT)

It looks a bit cheaper in the UK than in Europe. Still way more than the US though.

The comparison is not 100% correct though, since Belgian prices include 21% BE VAT, while US mentioned prices don’t include the tax. VAT is a factor that’s beyond the control of Adobe. Also, as a Belgian company, you get that 21% back. Nevertheless, Adobe surely makes additional profit thanks to the weak dollar atm, and raises the EUR prices even when you don’t include the VAT.

The correct comparison should be, for the CS4 Master Collection:
Full: USA: 2,499 USD / BE: 2,799 EUR (or 4,125 USD atm)
Upgrade: USA: 899 USD / BE: 999 EUR (or (1,473 USD atm)
(These are BE prices without VAT).

Apple is capable of adapting its prices for the Euro market though, by lowering the EUR price, instead of making it higher as Adobe does:
Final Cut Studio 2: 1,299 USD / 1,074 EUR (or 1582 USD atm).

I never saw any decent reason from Adobe which justifies the extra charges, other than the extra costs for translating the products & manuals, while I’m using English software at the end Even Apple doesn’t use ‘translation’ as an excuse and provides almost all products in all possible languages, usually included and changeable with a single click

Thanks for clearing that up Peter. Your comparison is a correct one. While it’s still more expensive, the difference is not as big as shown in the charts. I do think that this is an industry trend. You already made the Apple comparison but as another example look at Microsoft Vista. Ultimate costs USD219 in the US while you pay EUR387 over here (without taxes). It’s not just Adobe!

Sorry.. That should have been USD387 (EUR263) over here

Serge, then on Apple is correct, I don’t want to see other companies which do same BAD thing, i want to see GOOD companies examples

Oh… Here’s another great example: The book Object Oriented Actionscript 3 costs $54 in Europe (excl taxes) and only $31 in the US

Here’s another interesting example in favor of Serge:

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac (prices without VAT):

USA: 259 USD / BE: 437 EUR (or 644 USD)

But with one big difference compared to Adobe: I can order Office 2008 in the USA without any EULA region restrictions. So it will cost me only 175 EUR (=259 USD) instead of 437 EUR! That’s of course excluding shipping and import taxes.

I wonder if the current weak dollar is affecting current prices in a way to influence future pricing. Eventually, the dollar should rebound. When that happens, Adobe probably doesn’t want to have to reprice non-US sales. So setting a higher Euro price now, prevents that from happening in the future. I have no idea if that’s how these things actually get priced… and hell, with the current USA government I have no idea if the dollar will ever recover.

But all that said, I agree that the current pricing sucks.

Is there any reason a European customer can’t buy from a US reseller? Especially if that customer could deal with the English version?

Peter, at least you are ok

GREECE : CS4 Master Coll. costs 3.386 euros (2.799 ex VAT).
UK: CS4 Master Coll. costs £2.313 (£1.969 ex VAT) which is right now:
2910 euros (2477 ex VAT)

I don’t want to learn the price of the distributor here but the above price for Greeks are from the Greek Adobe store..

Marc, I would tough the same but the same gap existed when the US dollar was as strong as the Euro.

Just to be clear: By picking Vista as a comparison, I did not compare Adobe to Microsoft. I also picked your book as a comparison and can easily make a list of other things that are more expensive in Europe than in the US. Even gas is 1.5 times more expensive in EU as it is in the US… Surely there must be a reason for that?

No Microsoft doesn’t have any download versions of most of it’s software. I was just pointing out that there are other big companies out there who don’t have a region restriction in place and that turns out in big advantages for us Europeans now. Apple has a region restriction as Adobe does, but adjusts it’s prices accordingly which makes it somewhat fair, instead of making abuse of the situation.

@Marc: I saved about £300 buying CS3 from a seller in the US via ebay.co.uk with no problems.

As to whether I violated any region restrictions in the EULA… I have no idea

Just import your software man

Gas? Fuel in Eurpoe is more expensive becuase of higher taxes. Typical pre-tax prices of fuel are very similar. UK fuel market is so fierce that typically *pre-tax* price is lower than US and other ‘western’ nations. Trouble is, over 85% of the pump price is tax in the UK, v’s about 10% or less in the US.

As for getting better prices on your software … if you have a good friend who trusts you, who lives in a cheaper country and thus has an address and credit card in that country, he should be able to order and download the software for you… Of course he has to know you’ll pay him for it otherwise you may not be friends for long

I contacted Adobe after CS3 came out year and a half ago regarding this issue. They replied:

The price of software in EMEA (europe-middle east-africa) reflects both the additional expense to develop and test Adobe’s applications for local markets and operating systems, as well as for the delivery of complimentary Warranty support.

They also said that you can buy the Suite from the US and use it in Europe but you’re not entitled to get local support. Find full reply here.

k

Price gouging like this keeps sites like astalavista online.

With that big a price difference for the suites, I can buy myself a ticket to New York, spend a little weekend there, buy CS4, and come back with it.

It’s bloody ridiculous. The only reason they charge so much is that they can get away with it: they probably lose a lot of customers in the process, but they’d have to lose nearly half of their european customers before it makes a dent.

Its an utter joke tbh, even with ‘localisation’ the costs are no way that high. Plenty of other software manufacturers prices are practically flat rate in comparison. I would of thought there must be come sort of European regulatory watchdog who can bring Adobe to task about their pricing surely?

Maybe some contact Meglena Kuneva of the European Commission?

http://ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/kuneva/index_en.htm

Perhaps show her the price disparities?

Enough bad press and Adobe might change their tune (worth a shot perhaps?).

It’s sad that in a world that needs a lot less CO², i order books, sent from a company hub 7000km/4000miles from where i live, only because i pay about half of the price compared to ordering from Amazon in Europe.

Could they simply allow us to buy us versions at us price via download (with little or no support) ? That seems fair.

By the way, i’ve never called adobe/macromedia support (director/photoshop/illustrator in 1995 !). The community is our support.

Same here - who needs support?!

A no-support no-packaging, no-documentation download would suit many people’s need and would surely be cheaper to provide.

But if they charged less they”d make less money of course…

Not 100%, because for the same amount of money (or a little more) i will upgrade my CS3 web premium to a CS4 master Collection.

AE is one of my tools of choice, Premiere or Encore could become part of my arsenal as well.

So they will get more money in the long term (via Master collection futures upgrade).

Apple is often cited as example. But a company called “Macromedia” (maybe you’re too young to remeber) was less greedy in the past.

As far as I understand, Adobe charge more in some countries because their research indicates they can get away with it. I for one can’t justify such a difference in price and hence am not buying into it. Many though probably have little choice as they are heavily dependent on Flash etc.. Basically Adobe have little to no competition so they don’t have a compelling reason to change things. The “research” probably doesn’t include damage to reputation or trust. How accurate that research is can also be questioned - how well were prospective customers represented? did they check the willingness to pay of mainly existing customers and/or adobe enthusiasts? did they check one-man-shops as well as large corporations? etc..

I guess the other thing is: Did the responses of those questioned in such research take into consideration awareness that customers in other countries may pay almost half as much? i.e. there’s a difference in asking:

1. Would you be willing to pay 3600 euros including tax (3000 euros excluding tax) for CS4 Master Collection?
2. Would you be willing to pay 3600 euros including tax (3000 euros excluding tax) for CS4 Master collection if you knew that US customers only need to pay 1700 euros?

I bet the survey responses to the above two questions would be quite different. If Adobe haven’t already done so, maybe they should factor this into their “research”.

http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=36819524347

I actually had this problem upgrading last time - I checked how much it was going to cost to get the download update for cs3 in the US and it came to $499 which, at the time was about £250 in the UK, so I checked the cost of the UK download and it was going to cost £515 for me to download it in the UK - more than twice the price. And It was the exactly same download - there was no difference… so I got my buddy in NY to reg for me and he just sent a link to the download… screw you Adobe! You’re like the stingy uncle that you can’t help but love. But seriously why do we have to pay this much more? - Someone made the point that is for localization… well I have never used it - ever… I understand why so much gets pirated with a pricing structure like this.

The german official price for the CS4 Master Colection in the Adobe store is 2999 Euros without Taxes, which is about 4500 USD. And as far as I know, Adobe does not allow upgrading europaen licences with US-Updates of CS4, German Upgrade for CS4 Master Collection is 1926 Euros ( + taxes!) which is stil more expansive than a new US-licence.

Besides: Any ideas, why is the download-version is more expensive than the boxed version in Germany?

I bought cs3 legit and when a support issue was raised at Adobe by e-mail I did not get 1 response ….from anyone…even after a snotty letter stating the above…..nothing ! if the extra cost is for support, that’s BS. I got the issue sorted off the web after looking for a sodding week !

Go to the UK CS4 shows and give the Adobe reps the grief I know I am. I wonder if they get paid 50% more for doing the shows in the UK ?