please keep me up to date on the EU commision .... I have written to them and OFT the office of fair trading and filed a complaint.... adobe is appauling

If Adobe transferred the ownership if their Logo to Adobe Ireland and Adobe Ireland charged all other Adobe business locations for the use of the Logo then if the charge rate was 95% of what would be the pre tax profit then the local Adobe business would only be liable to pay Company tax on the 5% of their PTP.

That is similar to what Starbucks UK is doing and they have been paying hardly any UK tax.

Or they could just close Adobe USA and move everyone to Ireland

Today, I recevied a response from the EU commission (dated 18th June).  My petition has been entered under the EU General Register.

This has now been forwarded to the committee on petitions for consideration to check to make sure it is wtihin the remit of the EU (which, as it concerns trade it should be).

I will let you hear when I learn more.

wonderful...... keep me posted

Please keep us posted to ...

Nice one!

I wrote something here about about the subject:

http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/neelie-kroes/young-advisors-ideas/#comment-3204

I was in two minds between purchasing the single app subscription (for Photoshop) and the full subscription, it was tipped in the favour of single app purley based on cost. Now if the pricing had been in line with the US I would have taken the full subscription without blinking.

Adobe are screwing themselves here. Ultimatly, I can image this is the case for a lot of people - that they only really need signicant access to one of the apps but most people would pay the full price is it was reasonable enough. Adobe get more money simple!

Hi Nigma2k,

I agree fully. It is the same for us. We would have upgraded all our clients to the subscription, now we just purchased one as it was really needed,
all others still have older versions. Summing up the total, Adobe earned less with us this way. I hoped Adobe would recodnize this, as they mentioned
some time back in a press release, that Cloud doesn't sell as good as expected in Europe. Well guess why... I am still in faith and hope they change as
in Australia, but probably it needs a hammer from the EU.

Patrick

Same with me.

Just stopped the purchase process when seeing prices for Switzerland in CHF.

You even wont find a support email to ask why there are price differences.

Thinking about it, when a company treats its potential customers that way,

how will they treat existing customers - for example much higher prices for

the subscription in the coming years?

I think Adobe doesnt care, as long as they have a monopol - but their monopol

is about to collapse.

Adobe empire is not collapsing anytime soon... Even if they lose like 25-30% of their old costumers due to the subscription plans, they will still dominate everything on a massive scale on their fields. And in the way, they get those 20-30% back in new costumers that couldn't afford the previous perpetual prices.

Despite of prices differences, to simply put, Adobe will reign because of

a) there is no real competition around (nope, GIMP and the rest are not really competition because most of them are not ready to be used in a professional level)

b) like Adobe prices decisions or not, Adobe has the best tools in lots of their fields. Some of their products are great, they innovate and lots of times they push the state of the art foward.

I don't like the price differences, and i think that's a greedy move from Adobe, but also i cannot afford to not use the Adobe tools i need. And i won't be loosing massive amounts of time learning new tools that are subpar when compared to the Adobe counterparts.

Stephen,

Is there any up to date new with regards to this?

Matt

Sent from my Windows Phone

Nothing will change.

Sent from my Windows Phone

Wow! Nearly 41'000 views and no proper reply from Adobe

Adobe don't give a dam. They are too busy making money.

Kind regards

Paul

Sent from my iPad

And it isn't Adobes fault if there isn't any competition.

IF GIMP and other don't reach professional level it is because there is no need for it, and a paralell product would sooner then not infringe copyright rules.

One of the major novelty in IT Technologies, is that when the job its done, its done and its done for the whole planet.

So the question isn't to be againt monopol, but how to deal with de facto monopols.

Some says that the succes of the specie human is its capacity to adapt to changing conditions.

Has "human economicus" lost this capacity? (lol, the latin word **** economicus isn't politicaly correct)

I just stopped the purchasing process ! It's still the same with the prices like last year and the versions before?

any progress with the eu petition ?

What peeves me off is that I only bought CS6 in June 2012 yet I must pay the same upgrade fee as someone who, for example, bought CS4 a few years ago! I would have been happy to pay the $19.99 equivalent in the UK - even with some add on for the greedy middle-men.

At least in the US there is a different price for the complete version for those with CS3 to CS5 ($29.99) than those with CS6 ($19.99).

My wife uses Corel Draw X6 and it pretty does much of what I need.

At £27.34 a month I would rather pay someone in say, South Africa, to do the work. CS6 is more a toy for me to do a straw man of what I need to support my business (and to keep me from being idle when I have spare time) - and is not a core product in revenue generation - and therefore at the UK price it is very EXPENSIVE!

It's amazing that Adoce Creative Cloud in Portugal costs $90 USD per month!!! How much greedier can you get?

Got a written letter response from the EU commission (if I remember correctly - threw it away immediately). They said it's not in their competence to deal with this, and also added that it is not their place to control pricing of private companies. There you go. Well, there's not much to be expected from the EU lately, anyway...

Thank you for taking the time to take this up with the EU.

I propose that we start a crowd funded project to develop a serious professional alternative to Adobe's products.

We're running companies in multiple countries and can't purchase across borders, how bad is that?

Surely a WTO issue too...

We're supporting EU action - please post a site with updates.

So it's been 9 months since bothering to read e-mails this time.  Some good arguments and some bad ones, it's been an interesting read overall.

I'd like to report that after my 12 month subscription was finished the price remained the same for anyone who's interested, exchange rates withstanding of course. (I've seen 1 comment on here saying that they would raise it on you after a certain amount of time)

I cannot justify some of the pricing strategies made by Adobe with regards to the software in other countries.  Based on what I've read, Australia's prices seem shocking.  However, it also seems that this was the case before CC with CS, so the problem would not seem to be associated with CC itself but rather Adobe's pricing strategies.

Which brings me back to my original point;

Many of the people here who are not buying CC (for various reasons) claim to own a copy of CS, or an individual application.  Now, as I've said before, prior to CC the only option to obtain Adobe's software (legally) was to buy it.  The last time I checked the prices for CS6 before purchasing a CC subscription, Photoshop Extended was £600.  The whole creative Suite was £2500

So let's start with an individual application.  Let's take my £46.88/month subscription fee and do some maths:

600/46.87 = 12.8

So that's over 12 months for the cost of a CC subscription to exceed that of buying Photoshop Extended outright. Doesn't sound good but CC gives all CS programs and Adobe Web Services, so let's take the CS price and do it again:

2500/46.87 = 53.3

That's nearly 4 and a half years.  But we have upgrades and web services to add on as well, so the true number would be higher than this.

It's this calculation that is confusing me with people who are from the UK claiming that Creative Cloud is too expensive.  They're saying they have the money to buy the software, but not to rent it at a far more affordable price?  Everyone who's complaining seems to be ignoring this.

Yes upgrading would be cheaper even if you owned CS3, but that was still a few hundred pounds every year right? About £200-£250 a year? (I can't recall the number myself)  Half the price, but you didn't get the web services thrown in with that upgrade price which is something else to take into account.  However, Creative Suite is a product that is now all but discontinued so this is no longer an option.  Do you react the same when any other product gets discontinued by any other company?

Now, in response to D-Signer, it's a noble job you are doing, I commend you on that.  I too have worked for a charity, my first job out of university.  However, being a charity they couldn't afford to purchase any Adobe applications, so I resorted to using GIMP and InkScape as they are free:

D-Signer wrote:

 

We help the poor, the ill, the handicapped. We are the highest protector of blind people. We build schools and vaccinate children in the 3rd World. We are even the only organisation in the world with permanent seats in the United Nations General Assembly. And we don't get paid a dime doing it.

 

So buying insanely overpriced software to compete with all the other organisations - that willingly take your money, and spend as much as 60-70% of what they collect to buy expensive commercials and ADOBE CREATIVE CLOUD instead of providing AID TO THOSE WHO NEED IT - simply is out of our reach.

No. Nobody 'NEEDS' Adobe software.  It is a luxury. Most of modern digital design is a luxury commodity for businesses.  With the global recession many aspects of the creative industry were hit badly.  After all, if you're a business cutting down costs are you going to order that new logo you were thinking of?  Granted that's a very specific example but if you're in the industry I'm sure you've noticed the downturn in work and employment opportunities.

I also assume you have a copy of Creative Suite 6 or 5?  Can I ask what it is in Creative Cloud that you NEED so badly?  Because, there's not a huge amount of difference from CS6 in CC, sure some extra options and functions.  But nothing that's revolutionised the software (The commercial fonts from Typekit are sweet though).  I don't know what your work is in so I'm unable to point at any aspecific application.

D-Signer wrote:

 

To round this up in reference to Da-Design. My design-work is 90% voluntary work for a global humanitarian service organisation where we have to pay for expenses ourselves. The reason is quite simple, all the money we earn is to be used 100% for aid to our local community, our national projects and international projects.

"We have to pay expenses ourselves" - So you also were happy to pay the higher price tag of Creative Suite?  I don't know the prices involved for the Nordic countries so this is an assumption but I think you are being hypocritical.  You're saying you're upset because it's going to cost you more now, even though that higher cost doesn't come into effect for 5 years? (Longer still if you include the upgrades) Even though you already own a copy of Creative Suite?  Which would provide with 99% of the tools required to do digital design at a competitive level?

You don't need the absolute latest software to compete.  You need to be good.  Do you think that because I own CC that my designs are going to better than yours and that I'm going to steal your competition away?  That's not correct in the slightest and you know it.

There are also many free alternatives out there to Adobe's products, and there are many commercial applications too that can acheive similar results for a fraction of the price (Have you heard of BlackInk?  It's in Alpha atm, but looks neat).  If you're working for a charitable organisation why are you buying the most expensive products on the market?  It seems irresponsible.

D-Signer wrote:

 

Da-Designer posted another argument here, that you make money by buying (well, you will have to be very big to do that in the Nordic countries). And since i.e. British customers are used to paying "astronoimically" much more for petrol (a commodity very simmilar to graphichs software...) and a lot of consumer goods are far more expensive here, therefore Adobe's poducts must be higher priced as well. Now that is as stupid an argument as you will ever find them!
Has it ever occured to you that the criminally high prices on necessities actually will contribute to "the new generation" of users simply not being able to afford buying Adobe...

Again, you missed the point I was actually making.  No I don't think Graphics Software is a similar commodity to petrol, it was an easy example to use because everyone in the UK knows how high the prices are here for petrol. The point I was actually trying to make is that the cost of living in the UK is higher than that of the US.  An american friend of mine who came over some years back said that on average things cost about 40% more in the UK than in the US.  This includes things like essentials too (Milk, Bread, etc).  There are some things that are cheaper here than in the US, but I only know of Marmite (Hater btw).  The difference between US and UK for CC is much less than that by that judgment.

With regards to the "new generation" I think you'll find I fall into that category.  I only graduated from university in 2009.  Do you know what I couldn't afford after leaving university?  Any Adobe application.  We had been trained on them using the universities copies, so once I left I had no software.

Do you know what I could have afforded straight after leaving university?  Creative Cloud.  My career would have been at least a year further ahead if CC was released back in 2009.

Instead you would all prefer that the professionals have to pay the astronomical price tag of £2500.  A price that gives smaller businesses and individuals little chance to compete with larger design companies?  Which forces creative individuals to seek employment rather than fulfilling their own creative desires?

CC is arguably the best design software on the market.  With its far more affordable price it's liberating individuals like myself to persue personal projects, not just commercial ones.  Even now after 4 years I doubt I'd have been able to save the money to buy a copy of CS for myself.

CC to me personally has been a blessing, I was ecstatic when I found out about it.  No more clunky open source user-interfaces to shout at.  Viable experience for employment in the correct software.  And not requiring employment or large investment to gain that experience essential to mine, and many other's, careers.

Buy it or don't buy it, everybody's free to do what they want

Until next year everyone!

I was going to join CC today until I saw the price difference. What a rip-off. £46.88 = $78. I won't be paying until it is a fair price for UK nationals. The EU should really get involved here. In the meantime I'll seek other avenues and Adobe won't get a penny from me.

This may have been somewhat defensible when you had a shrink wrapped product.

Your argument about 'meeting local staff' and 'attending local seminars' is absolutely ridiculous. I have never done that - and never want to - like 99.999999% of your prospective users. We don't need 'local sales people; it's 2014. We are talking about identical bits downloaded from a server at marginal cost.

When it's identical bits downloaded from a server - that might as well be in the US - the only difference would be VAT.

I have no requirement for ANY staff based in the UK/Europe - nor do you.

This also strongly encourages piracy - on principle.

You're charging more to rip people off - pure and simple.

Exactly because of this I have investigated independent programs like Acorn & Pixelmator - they cost as much to buy outright as a single product on CC costs for 1 month. They do much of what I need.

The more I investigate the easier it looks to totally replace Adobe products - in every field. Actually much of what you do is bloatware with awful legacy. Fireworks was great - but you killed it!

I am now working out how to totally move away from Adobe for all my needs - I am very close, it's surprisingly easy & I strongly recommend this to everyone.

If you treat customers like idiots; be prepared to lose customers. You do NOT have irreplaceable software.

If there's something people hate it is being ripped off. Take note - or you'll endup like Quark.

TimmyMagic wrote:

 

I was going to join CC today until I saw the price difference. What a rip-off. £46.88 = $78. I won't be paying until it is a fair price for UK nationals. The EU should really get involved here. In the meantime I'll seek other avenues and Adobe won't get a penny from me.

The recently revised Creative Cloud Photography Program (PS+LR etc) is priced at £8.78 in UK, the US price is S9.99 (£5.88 at 1.7 $ to the £) plus sale taxes that vary on a jurisdiction to jurisdiction basis

Sales taxes in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We are getting a RAW deal in the UK

Sorry doesn't wash. in the past there was good reason for a price differentiation but no longer. to paraphrase the adobe response above "please note, your customers are free do decide at which price point we consider your pricing policy plain to simply be price gouging"

Living in Holland, we are forced to pay the monthly cost of EUR 12.29 for the PS/Lightroom combo while in the US it's USD 9.99

Most companies already exploit the currencies by charging the same in EUR as they do in USD - for example USD 99,- becomes EUR 99,- over here. That's already a markup above the dollar price (after conversion), but Adobe is going even further by increasing the EUR price on top of that - that's really exploiting the European market.

Funny, I just read from the facebook page that Australia's government summoned Adobe to justify it's pricing and within 2 days before the inquiry, Adobe lowered their pricing: Adobe cuts Aussie prices ahead of government probe | CG Channel ..why doesn't Europe do the same?

One more annoyed EU customer here. I am refusing to move to CC since this EU-overpricing feels like getting screwed. It is not about the few euros. It is about feeling getting screwed. Normal custom for EU (over)pricing is just to convert change the currency and keep nominal price the same (i.e. USD 10 becomes EUR 10). That is already +30% price delta so Adobe going beyond that is just greedy.

Claiming that it is 70% more expensive to do business in EU than in US is just plain rubbish. At least it is not for many other companies selling subscription-based services and software in EU.

How many days do you need to work if based in the EU to pay for one year of Creative Cloud? Two? Maybe 3 if you're cheap? Thats a whole lot of days where CC pretty much costs you nothing...

oMikeo1234

How is your comment related to Adobe's discriminating pricing in Europe vs. in the US? I do not see there any connection. You are commenting about CC's price level and that is a different topic.

@oMikeo1234

That's completely random and makes no sense at all… It depends from country to country. Probably someone in Germany can, easily pay a year of CC subscription in X days, but someone is Portugal or Greece will only do it in X+Y days. About your 2 or 3 days period to pay one year of CC… Yea right… 600€ - 700€ (without taxes) in 2 days? That's almost 8k € per month, and working only 22 days… If you include Saturdays, as many do, thats more than 9k€ a month. Not many can do that… As i previously said, it's perfectly doable to pay the CC subscription. The monthly fee are just a few hours of work in a month. But the problem is not that, the problem is the different prices just because Adobe wants them. There is no explanation on why we pay a lot more. That's the problem!

With the current situation in Greece, a typical freelancer will need a month at best, to pay for one year of Creative Cloud. It is very expensive. I am glad the alternatives are getting stronger. The only app that doesn't have any serious alternatives is After Effects, in my opinion. Apple's Motion is nice but lacks some important functionality like scripting for example.

Went to sign up for CC and was disgusted at the price differential between Europe and US. Where Adobe$ argument falls down is it does not answer why a number of countries such as Belarus, Georgia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco (and many others) are able to make their purchases in $ at the same rate as in the US. surely many of these countries are overall managed by their EMEA office.