Ripoff for EU customers...

[Timmy_Fox]

So .. considering the current USD-EUR exchange rates, why is it that Creative Cloud subscriptions are so much more expensive here in the EU compared to US?

I mean, take a look at the photography package. This is $9.99 in the US. But for EU customers why does this suddenly become a whopping €11.89???

Considering the current exchange rates at the time of writing, $9.99 USD is €8.61 EUR. The Euro is even higher in value than the USD. So why such awful pricing here in EU?

And no, it's not VAT either. Since it varies from country to country let's take Germany for example. They have 19% VAT. If I take that €8.61 and apply 19% VAT that's still only €10.25. Nowhere near that €11.89 you're actually charging. In fact, it's nearly €20 (=$23) more expensive per year compared to a US-based customer.

So how about say a Nordic country? At 25% VAT these have some of the highest VAT-rates in Europe. Well, doing the math I get €10.76 after applying 25% VAT, more than a whole Euro less than the amount actually being charged. Per month. This means that for those customers it's over €13.5 (=$15.75) more expensive per year compared to a US-based customer.

How about the UK (20% VAT)? $9.99 USD = £7.61 GBP. Adding VAT that becomes £9.5, meaning a £0.48 (=$0.63) per month price difference compared to a US-based customer, or £5.76 (=$7.56) per year. A bit more reasonable but still a bit more expensive.

And this is just for the $9.99 photography package, for the larger and more expensive packages these numbers go even higher. For the full CC package ($49.99/€59.49) this is a difference of a whopping €99 (=$115) per year between the US pricing and the Euro pricing with German VAT applied.

Also worth noting is that the VAT does not have to be different inside the EU. If Adobe registers in, say, Germany then the German VAT can be applied to sales all across the EU as opposed to having to pay local VAT in every individual EU country.

So I ask, again, why is it that EU customers get shafted with the pricing???

[fenjas29325284]

Sometimes they adapt the prices according to major changes of the exchange rates - in both directions. For example the prices for Switzerland (down) and Australia (up).

They don't follow the more or less minor fluctuations of the Euro.

Fenja

[Timmy_Fox]

Well, that doesn't answer it I'm afraid. Looking at the exchange rate history the EU price is still notably higher than the highest peak we've had in the USD/EUR rates in the last 10 years.

It looks more to me as if they've just assumed a 1:1 conversion rate (despite the actual rate being closer to 0.85) and then added the 19% German VAT on top of that. The problem doing this is that a 1:1 USD/EUR convertion actually gives a very close approximation to what the actual Euro price should be WITH the VAT included, adding the VAT on top of that means effectively charging us in the EU near double the amount compared to what the VAT actually should be.