10 ms·

Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

130 points by kgabis 12y ago

martinald 12y ago
Can you see a reference to them charging VAT? If not, that's pretty ludicrous.
- wastedhours 12y ago
  My first thought was this as well - we tend to list prices inc VAT in Europe, but it's almost always without in the States, no?
  - inglor 12y ago
    You can count on the iOS in-app purchase to include VAT. There is no way to bypass that without violating the apple ToS since you'd effectively be charging a different value than you're saying.
  - virmundi 12y ago
    America doesn't have a VAT. Internet services seldom have any tax requirement at all. Laws vary, but the onus is on the customer to pay local and state taxes. There is federal sales tax at all.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      My buddy that sold books online had to calculate our own state's sales tax (by county and city! yuck) because he has to report here. But if you were out of state he didn't charge the sales tax. Its a broken system, very weird.
      - UrMomReadsHN 12y ago
        Individual states can't tax interstate commerce, that's the job of the feds. Actually, they can if they have a presence in both states - they can only tax a business that has a physical presence in that state. It isn't broken, it is part of the [inferred] Constitution. The idea is to not place burdens on interstate commerce. Without it the states would be free to give their state preference in commerce - to tax commerce interstate at a high rate so nobody wants to engage in interstate commerce. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause "The central rationale for the rule against discrimination is to prohibit state or municipal laws whose object is local economic protectionism, laws that would excite those jealousies and retaliatory measures the Constitution was designed to prevent"
        JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Sure that part is right. Its the part where he had to spend Saturday calculating tax rates for every in-state purchase depending on address. That's broken; it's part of why he gave up the business.
  - 6cxs2hd6 12y ago
    > tend to list prices inc VAT in Europe I was under the impression it's a legal requirement to show the inc VAT price. (And, show it as the most-prominent price -- no trickery like showing exc VAT bold, and inc VAT in fine print.)
    - Vespasian 12y ago
      I thought that too and here in Germany I'm very certain that's the case if you are selling to individuals. However when looking at the sales pages of JetBrains[1] (a czech company) they do not include VAT even for the individual developers version (which is explicitly not available to companies) so it might be that only national law applies (EU is difficult ;) ) http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/buy/choose_edition.jsp?license=PERSONAL http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/buy/choose_edition.jsp?license...
- Kudos 12y ago
  If you go through the business sign up flow you can see they are charging 20% VAT.
Drakim 12y ago
"... for $99/year (or $9,99/month), which is a pretty good deal (Google Drive 1TB also costs $9,99/year). " Should it say "/month" on Google Drive as well? Because otherwise, if those prices are correct then Google Drive is a lot cheaper, but the article implies that it has the same price.
- kgabis 12y ago
  Fixed :)
jvandenbroeck 12y ago
Yeah I hate it when I have to pay more for a service as a European. It might seem silly but that's the reason I cancelled my Spotify account, I didn't want to pay a 'European' premium. I hate it when they check from which country your creditcard number is - Netflix is nice that they allow you to register in a different country with a VPN & don't check the credit card country.
- rtpg 12y ago
  Well VAT is usually levied on online services but sales tax isn't so it's normal for you to pay at least ~20% more. The Internet doesn't make companies immune to taxes
- simonbarker87 12y ago
  I get what you mean but seeing as Spotify is a European company and launched in the US a long time after Euro launch it's more like a US discount.
- aianus 12y ago
  You can register in your home country for Netflix and the available shows will still be determined by your VPN's IP.
  - furyg3 12y ago
    Yes, if you're in Germany your programming is for Germany whether or not you have a US or German account. The bad news is that you'll have to use a VPN to pretend to be from some other country (US) in order to get some of the shows not offered in your own country (Germany). The good news is that you can use a VPN to register for Netflix (and pay less!) and get the same content as you would get if you registered in Germany. The last time I checked some Netflix features (watch list?) were disabled if you are 'traveling' outside your region.
    - skrause 12y ago
      How can you see German programming in Netflix when it doesn't even exist yet in Germany? They're supposed to launch here in two weeks, but as far as I know nothing is available yet.
kloktier 12y ago
http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro vs. http://store.apple.com/de/buy-mac/macbook-pro http://store.apple.com/de/buy-mac/macbook-pro Same concept. You can't have the price of good fluctuating all the time in Europe because the relationship between the dollar and euro have changed. They fix the price, it accounts for VAT and sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- alandarev 12y ago
  No its not. One does not include VAT, other does. In Dropbox example both include VAT. You can see this tendency clearly in digital games. When I worked with games pricing for MacOS, I asked why such a huge difference? Boss replied: "It is the easiest to force Europeans into premium costs". There is even a chrome extension which shows how much a game costs in different countries on Steam website: Buy Sid Meier's Civilization V US: $29.99 (18.04 GBP) RU: 249 pуб. (4.01 GBP) (78% ) CIS: $14.99 USD (9.02 GBP) (50% ) BR: R$ 44,99 (12.11 GBP) (33% ) UK: £19.99 (11% ) EU: 29,99€ (23.7 GBP) (31% ) AU: $69.99 USD (42.11 GBP) (133% ) ----- Also not long time ago there was an article about Spotify pricing [1]. It simply is a many years ongoing Europe rip-off. [1] - http://mts.io/projects/spotify-pricing/ http://mts.io/projects/spotify-pricing/
  - cyanbane 12y ago
    One of the neat things about this is that it sometimes produces arbitrage that people leverage if the game does not have geo-restrictions built in. People will purchase in bulk and then trade.
  - dspillett 12y ago
    For services like Spotify you do have to account for different delivery costs they may have in Europe. Bandwidth is more expensive over here (partly because it just is, and partly because in many places we are not as well served so it is a more contended resource) which they will have to factor in. There may be differing costs for payment processing too, and if they have any sort of tech support and documentation there will be larger internationalisation costs in Europe too. These things are unlikely to explain all the difference (probably not even close to half of it) but we need to consider these thing to make sure we are being fair when shouting "rip off!".
adwf 12y ago
Or it could just be a standard pricing trick where you let the customer think they're getting a great deal by "working the system" when it's actually what you intended them to do all along. Dan Ariely has some good examples of this in his talks/books.
- Drakim 12y ago
  That's a possibility, but it has to be weighed against the ill-will you generate among the customers who realize that they are given/have been paying a higher price. This article is a perfect example. It certainly doesn't boost my opinion of dropbox.
  - adwf 12y ago
    Very true. In this case I imagine it's just a VAT issue, it's usually included in the price by default in the EU. But whenever someone points out weird pricing and gets excited about a "great deal!", I usually have to check and think - is it really weird? Or is this entirely what is meant to happen?
    - vetinari 12y ago
      It is not a VAT issue. Not only is VAT about the half of the price difference, but in addition, not everyone has to pay VAT. If you are private end-user, sure, you have to. But if you are a company, even if a small one (like startup, for example), you are surely registered VAT payer and you can get it back. But the price doesn't say whether it includes VAT or not. If you are purchasing outside of EEA, it usually does not.
kekub 12y ago
> I guess we should thank apple for not allowing different pricing in different regions. Apple lets me pay 699 Euro (http://store.apple.com/de/buy-iphone/iphone5s http://store.apple.com/de/buy-iphone/iphone5s) in Germany vs 649$ (http://store.apple.com/us/buy-iphone/iphone5s http://store.apple.com/us/buy-iphone/iphone5s) in the US.
- hbbio 12y ago
  Just a reminder in this case: EU prices include the VAT (near 20% in many cases), while in the US the state tax (often 10%) is not included in public prices.
  - masklinn 12y ago
    Except 1 EUR = 1.31 USD right now, so even with a 19% VAT, the EUR value should be lower than USD: $649 + 19% VAT is 588€ not 699. 19% european surcharge on top of the VAT.
    - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
      How about import taxes then? I can imagine Apple is a US company and thus pays either no or very little import tax when they get their shipments from the production facilities in China, but to get it to Europe costs more money. I can imagine. I know nothing.
      - masklinn 12y ago
        No import taxes on laptops or cell phones in the EU.
        giovannibajo1 12y ago
        My hypothesis has always been that Apple charges the whole country-wide infrastructure (retail, marketing, etc.) on products, while in US (where it would be harder/impossible to split nation-wide efforts from world-wide efforts) this is not being done. This also accounts for different prices in different European countries; e.g.: the cost of making business is very high in Italy (high salary taxes, high network costs, impossible to fire/sack people, etc.) so they make their products cost more in Italy to account for the additional costs of running operations there.
Kequc 12y ago
In general; a $2 cup of coffee in north america costs 2€ in Europe. A $300 Wii U in north america costs 300€ in Europe. The only time currency conversion matters is because you are converting between two currencies, when buying a product from another country. GOG.com sells all their games in north american prices because it only has offices in north america. You are buying a product from north america when you buy from them. Dropbox, Steam, Nintendo, Sony all have offices in Europe. So you aren't buying a foreign product and you do not account for a currency conversion as there isn't one. Taxes are an important consideration. For example if you buy a $500 cell phone from north america and have it shipped to Europe. You will pay less for the phone but when it crosses the border you pay considerable taxes such that the "deal" is no longer worth it. If import taxes were applied to physical as well as digital goods, as they probably should be, you would actively want to buy from a European company within Europe. You currently do for most goods, because it actually saves you money. It's the lag on charging tax for imported digital goods. Otherwise you are earning Euros you are spending Euros, there is no currency conversion.
- klausa 12y ago
  >GOG.com sells all their games in north american prices because it only has offices in north america. They also price their stuff in EUR, have offices in Poland and the company is registered on Cyprus.
- nicky0 12y ago
  > A $300 Wii U in north america costs 300€ in Europe. I don't get what you are saying. Do you think that the number will always be 300 everywhere. 300 Yen, 300 pounds?
  - rakoo 12y ago
    I take it you don't live in Europe. That's actually how it happens: when something costs $300 in the USA, you can bet it will cost 300€ here in Europe.
  - mkohlmyr 12y ago
    I understood his point to be rather the opposite, that the real price (if you had an absolute global unit) of the product in one place does not necessarily correlate to other places. The fact that the numbers he used were both 300 is irrelevant. The point he is making is that the cost in Europe is higher for reasons beyond the physical cost of the product.
phonos 12y ago
just use VPN like hola.org to pay for dropbox and you're ok..
nly 12y ago
My heart bleeds for my continental cousins. Here in the UK it's been common to see the old $/£ sign switcheroo for decades.
brk 12y ago
Even for cloud-based services like dropbox, the cost of doing business in all countries is not the same. There are different laws/regulations to deal with, costs for having foreign-language support people, costs for internationalizing parts of the UI/etc. Personally, I think it's kind of odd to expect that something will cost the exact same amount anywhere in the world. It might be that the added cost for dropbox to do business in Europe just happens to be very close to the exchange rate, so they just change the currency symbol and call it "close enough". There are plenty of things that are more expensive in the US than they are in Europe.
- chton 12y ago
  The problem isn't just paying more. I'm aware of how tax-heavy europe is, and how much harder it is to support the wide variety of languages and laws. In most cases, I would be fine paying a bit more for a service. The problem is the way the mark-up happens. They're not calculating the difference and marking that up, they're literally just equating US dollars with euros. $99 and €99 might sound similar, but the difference is over 30%. There is no way the additional support costs run that high, so it comes across as just an attempt to pull a fast one on europeans. I'm sure if they did a proper calculation and gave a realistic number, nobody would complain about the increased cost.
  - lucaspiller 12y ago
    Netflix and Spotify are the same. Spotify is £9.99 here in the UK, €9.99 in most of Western Europe and $9.99 in the US. Admittedly they have to deal with record labels so it's a bit different, but it's not really an excuse. Strangely Dropbox here is showing the price as $9.99.
    - mciancia 12y ago
      In Poland Spotify costs ~20zł which is just a little bit under 7$. So not always it's so bad
  - sugerman 12y ago
    Who is to say they didn't do a "proper calculation" and result in something close enough to €99 that they just rounded up/down to keep things consistent?
dreen 12y ago
If you are in Europe I recommend hubiC instead of Dropbox. They are much cheaper and have servers in Europe (France - they are child company of OVH). Dropbox only has servers in America [1], so its slower. - 25GB free - 100GB 1€/m - 10TB 10€/m Yes you read that right, its TEN TIMES the space of Dropbox Pro, for the same price. Im not affiliated or anything, just a satisfied customer. [1] - https://www.dropbox.com/help/7 https://www.dropbox.com/help/7
- rootinier 12y ago
  Dropbox uses Amazon S3, therefore servers are located in Europe as well. EDIT: maybe my statement was a bit premature. I was confident Amazon was keeping mirrors, but it seems they only do this in the same region. Dropbox runs its own infrastructure network and uses AWS for storing files, both solely in the US.
  - aidos 12y ago
    Do they use the European servers? It would be a lot more expensive from their point of view.
  - Lazare 12y ago
    That doesn't follow in the slightest. Just because AWS has data centres around the world, it doesn't follow that Dropbox is using them. Do you have any sort of cite for your claim? Because the link in the comment you're replying to suggests that they store everything purely in the US.
  - zuck9 12y ago
    They don't use S3 now. That was way long ago. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8233622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8233622
    - rootinier 12y ago
      Sync a file via Dropbox and run lsof -i, and you get something like this: ec2-54-221-232-10.compute-1.amazonaws.com:https EDIT: it may be that they use EC2 for their infrastructure, but not for actually storing files. But they still use AWS.
aikah 12y ago
I call it the "Apple pricing",where 1$ == 1€ .Why do businesses do that ? I'm pretty sure they'd ajust their pricing if 1€<1$. I get that one needs to adjust with local regulations,the cost doing business,localisation,... but still 1$ != 1€. (a few years ago, 1€ ~= 1.50$ , so much that people just flew to USA to buy expensive Apple gear,and it was still cheaper than paying the € price).
- Swizec 12y ago
  Or as is common now, at least one of your friends is always in the US and about to come home.
- doodyhead 12y ago
  Part of it is definitely that US prices are often listed exclusive of tax, while EU prices are listed inclusive, which instantly adds 20-30%. Granted, they still hike up the prices further in the EU and other markets, Australia being the most egregious example.
- _delirium 12y ago
  With Apple's market it seems inconsistent. There are some iPhone apps that are $0.99/€0.99/£0.99 or $9.99/€9.99/£9.99, but also many that are $0.99/€0.89/£0.69 or $9.99/€8.99/£6.99. Not an exact conversion, but not just swapping out the signs either. I think the app author gets to choose which of those two pricing schemes they want.
cookiecaper 12y ago
I was going to sign up for this on Friday, but it makes you buy a minimum of 5 licenses, so the lowest monthly payment is $75. I thought that was pretty lame so I started looking for something else. I tried ownCloud but it was not very happy with my PHP configuration so I quit that and ended up using Synology's Cloud Station and port-forwarding it. Costs $0 extra to me since I already have a Synology NAS, local storage, easy configuration that doesn't interfere with any existing services, and clients for mobile, Mac, and Linux (GUI only unfortunately). All of that would've been avoided if I could've just paid Dropbox $30/mo, but I guess I'm glad they priced themselves out by trying to force me to pay for 3 users that I'm not going to have for a long time.
- mongemalo 12y ago
  This. Nothing will replace my Synology and the amount of services it gives me. I already have two that backup each other. Best purchase of the year :)
antr 12y ago
Not unique to Dropbox but most software. This is why I have various Apple IDs. I purchase most, if not all, of the apps via the US iTunes store with my US Apple ID, given that many devs stills use $4.99 = €4.99. I only use a non-US Apple ID to download region specific apps: banking, local TV apps, etc.
Gonzih 12y ago
In Europe very small amount of companies does proper dollars -> euro conversion. Most of the time they just change label.
elorant 12y ago
It’s funny this is mentioned because just today I found out that the conversion rates at Asos.com from pound to euro are off by 12%. They calculate the conversion dividing by 0.70 instead of 0.79. So basically everyone buying products with prices based in euro is been ripped-off.
- chrisseaton 12y ago
  But there are no official exchange rates are there? So how can they be wrong? You must mean they're not as favourable as that which other companies are offering. In which case it's not a 'rip-off', it's just as good as deal as you might like it to be.
  - zurn 12y ago
    Sure there are. Here's ECB's for example. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/exchange/eurofxref/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/exchange/eurofxref/html/inde...
    - chrisseaton 12y ago
      That's just an observation of the exchange rate as it appears to be between large banks. Nobody is required to offer it to you.
ferrullan 12y ago
The thing i love about Dropbox is that the more i use it the more extra space and "gigas"...they give me. As an early and heavy user (i've invited 20 friends or more so far) they want me happy and i can feel it. that's what i love. They are not charging me for anything,and they won't try it. they know what type of user i am (a happy user that invites all of its friends) so they treat me like the user i am. I am sure my extra space is billed on any friend i've invited to the platform..
jonifico 12y ago
I remember when Steam did this back in the day (not sure if it still happens today) and it was a total shame. Lots of people using proxies to get US pricing on the other side of the pond. Now, I don't really know how the whole taxing thing moves about, but, are foreign customers forced to pay taxes for these kinds of products since they're considered 'imported'? Or maybe, do companies feel they should get more money to keep operating abroad? I'm just trying to look for possible explanations, but we all know this is just a cheeky, greedy play from these companies.
Morphling 12y ago
Europe tax is real with every product. Like I was going to buy Lenovo laptop for work, but as soon as I said that I was from EU the price almost doubled.

130 points by kgabis 12y ago

martinald 12y ago

Can you see a reference to them charging VAT? If not, that's pretty ludicrous.

wastedhours 12y ago
My first thought was this as well - we tend to list prices inc VAT in Europe, but it's almost always without in the States, no?
- inglor 12y ago
  You can count on the iOS in-app purchase to include VAT. There is no way to bypass that without violating the apple ToS since you'd effectively be charging a different value than you're saying.
- virmundi 12y ago
  America doesn't have a VAT. Internet services seldom have any tax requirement at all. Laws vary, but the onus is on the customer to pay local and state taxes. There is federal sales tax at all.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    My buddy that sold books online had to calculate our own state's sales tax (by county and city! yuck) because he has to report here. But if you were out of state he didn't charge the sales tax. Its a broken system, very weird.
    - UrMomReadsHN 12y ago
      Individual states can't tax interstate commerce, that's the job of the feds. Actually, they can if they have a presence in both states - they can only tax a business that has a physical presence in that state. It isn't broken, it is part of the [inferred] Constitution. The idea is to not place burdens on interstate commerce. Without it the states would be free to give their state preference in commerce - to tax commerce interstate at a high rate so nobody wants to engage in interstate commerce. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause "The central rationale for the rule against discrimination is to prohibit state or municipal laws whose object is local economic protectionism, laws that would excite those jealousies and retaliatory measures the Constitution was designed to prevent"
      - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Sure that part is right. Its the part where he had to spend Saturday calculating tax rates for every in-state purchase depending on address. That's broken; it's part of why he gave up the business.
- 6cxs2hd6 12y ago
  > tend to list prices inc VAT in Europe I was under the impression it's a legal requirement to show the inc VAT price. (And, show it as the most-prominent price -- no trickery like showing exc VAT bold, and inc VAT in fine print.)
  - Vespasian 12y ago
    I thought that too and here in Germany I'm very certain that's the case if you are selling to individuals. However when looking at the sales pages of JetBrains[1] (a czech company) they do not include VAT even for the individual developers version (which is explicitly not available to companies) so it might be that only national law applies (EU is difficult ;) ) http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/buy/choose_edition.jsp?license=PERSONAL http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/buy/choose_edition.jsp?license...
Kudos 12y ago
If you go through the business sign up flow you can see they are charging 20% VAT.

Drakim 12y ago

"... for $99/year (or $9,99/month), which is a pretty good deal (Google Drive 1TB also costs $9,99/year). " Should it say "/month" on Google Drive as well? Because otherwise, if those prices are correct then Google Drive is a lot cheaper, but the article implies that it has the same price.

kgabis 12y ago
Fixed :)

jvandenbroeck 12y ago

Yeah I hate it when I have to pay more for a service as a European. It might seem silly but that's the reason I cancelled my Spotify account, I didn't want to pay a 'European' premium. I hate it when they check from which country your creditcard number is - Netflix is nice that they allow you to register in a different country with a VPN & don't check the credit card country.

rtpg 12y ago
Well VAT is usually levied on online services but sales tax isn't so it's normal for you to pay at least ~20% more. The Internet doesn't make companies immune to taxes
simonbarker87 12y ago
I get what you mean but seeing as Spotify is a European company and launched in the US a long time after Euro launch it's more like a US discount.
aianus 12y ago
You can register in your home country for Netflix and the available shows will still be determined by your VPN's IP.
- furyg3 12y ago
  Yes, if you're in Germany your programming is for Germany whether or not you have a US or German account. The bad news is that you'll have to use a VPN to pretend to be from some other country (US) in order to get some of the shows not offered in your own country (Germany). The good news is that you can use a VPN to register for Netflix (and pay less!) and get the same content as you would get if you registered in Germany. The last time I checked some Netflix features (watch list?) were disabled if you are 'traveling' outside your region.
  - skrause 12y ago
    How can you see German programming in Netflix when it doesn't even exist yet in Germany? They're supposed to launch here in two weeks, but as far as I know nothing is available yet.

kloktier 12y ago

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro vs. http://store.apple.com/de/buy-mac/macbook-pro http://store.apple.com/de/buy-mac/macbook-pro Same concept. You can't have the price of good fluctuating all the time in Europe because the relationship between the dollar and euro have changed. They fix the price, it accounts for VAT and sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
alandarev 12y ago
No its not. One does not include VAT, other does. In Dropbox example both include VAT. You can see this tendency clearly in digital games. When I worked with games pricing for MacOS, I asked why such a huge difference? Boss replied: "It is the easiest to force Europeans into premium costs". There is even a chrome extension which shows how much a game costs in different countries on Steam website: Buy Sid Meier's Civilization V US: $29.99 (18.04 GBP) RU: 249 pуб. (4.01 GBP) (78% ) CIS: $14.99 USD (9.02 GBP) (50% ) BR: R$ 44,99 (12.11 GBP) (33% ) UK: £19.99 (11% ) EU: 29,99€ (23.7 GBP) (31% ) AU: $69.99 USD (42.11 GBP) (133% ) ----- Also not long time ago there was an article about Spotify pricing [1]. It simply is a many years ongoing Europe rip-off. [1] - http://mts.io/projects/spotify-pricing/ http://mts.io/projects/spotify-pricing/
- cyanbane 12y ago
  One of the neat things about this is that it sometimes produces arbitrage that people leverage if the game does not have geo-restrictions built in. People will purchase in bulk and then trade.
- dspillett 12y ago
  For services like Spotify you do have to account for different delivery costs they may have in Europe. Bandwidth is more expensive over here (partly because it just is, and partly because in many places we are not as well served so it is a more contended resource) which they will have to factor in. There may be differing costs for payment processing too, and if they have any sort of tech support and documentation there will be larger internationalisation costs in Europe too. These things are unlikely to explain all the difference (probably not even close to half of it) but we need to consider these thing to make sure we are being fair when shouting "rip off!".

adwf 12y ago

Or it could just be a standard pricing trick where you let the customer think they're getting a great deal by "working the system" when it's actually what you intended them to do all along. Dan Ariely has some good examples of this in his talks/books.

Drakim 12y ago
That's a possibility, but it has to be weighed against the ill-will you generate among the customers who realize that they are given/have been paying a higher price. This article is a perfect example. It certainly doesn't boost my opinion of dropbox.
- adwf 12y ago
  Very true. In this case I imagine it's just a VAT issue, it's usually included in the price by default in the EU. But whenever someone points out weird pricing and gets excited about a "great deal!", I usually have to check and think - is it really weird? Or is this entirely what is meant to happen?
  - vetinari 12y ago
    It is not a VAT issue. Not only is VAT about the half of the price difference, but in addition, not everyone has to pay VAT. If you are private end-user, sure, you have to. But if you are a company, even if a small one (like startup, for example), you are surely registered VAT payer and you can get it back. But the price doesn't say whether it includes VAT or not. If you are purchasing outside of EEA, it usually does not.

kekub 12y ago

> I guess we should thank apple for not allowing different pricing in different regions. Apple lets me pay 699 Euro (http://store.apple.com/de/buy-iphone/iphone5s http://store.apple.com/de/buy-iphone/iphone5s) in Germany vs 649$ (http://store.apple.com/us/buy-iphone/iphone5s http://store.apple.com/us/buy-iphone/iphone5s) in the US.

hbbio 12y ago
Just a reminder in this case: EU prices include the VAT (near 20% in many cases), while in the US the state tax (often 10%) is not included in public prices.
- masklinn 12y ago
  Except 1 EUR = 1.31 USD right now, so even with a 19% VAT, the EUR value should be lower than USD: $649 + 19% VAT is 588€ not 699. 19% european surcharge on top of the VAT.
  - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
    How about import taxes then? I can imagine Apple is a US company and thus pays either no or very little import tax when they get their shipments from the production facilities in China, but to get it to Europe costs more money. I can imagine. I know nothing.
    - masklinn 12y ago
      No import taxes on laptops or cell phones in the EU.
      - giovannibajo1 12y ago
        My hypothesis has always been that Apple charges the whole country-wide infrastructure (retail, marketing, etc.) on products, while in US (where it would be harder/impossible to split nation-wide efforts from world-wide efforts) this is not being done. This also accounts for different prices in different European countries; e.g.: the cost of making business is very high in Italy (high salary taxes, high network costs, impossible to fire/sack people, etc.) so they make their products cost more in Italy to account for the additional costs of running operations there.

Kequc 12y ago

In general; a $2 cup of coffee in north america costs 2€ in Europe. A $300 Wii U in north america costs 300€ in Europe. The only time currency conversion matters is because you are converting between two currencies, when buying a product from another country. GOG.com sells all their games in north american prices because it only has offices in north america. You are buying a product from north america when you buy from them. Dropbox, Steam, Nintendo, Sony all have offices in Europe. So you aren't buying a foreign product and you do not account for a currency conversion as there isn't one. Taxes are an important consideration. For example if you buy a $500 cell phone from north america and have it shipped to Europe. You will pay less for the phone but when it crosses the border you pay considerable taxes such that the "deal" is no longer worth it. If import taxes were applied to physical as well as digital goods, as they probably should be, you would actively want to buy from a European company within Europe. You currently do for most goods, because it actually saves you money. It's the lag on charging tax for imported digital goods. Otherwise you are earning Euros you are spending Euros, there is no currency conversion.

klausa 12y ago
>GOG.com sells all their games in north american prices because it only has offices in north america. They also price their stuff in EUR, have offices in Poland and the company is registered on Cyprus.
nicky0 12y ago
> A $300 Wii U in north america costs 300€ in Europe. I don't get what you are saying. Do you think that the number will always be 300 everywhere. 300 Yen, 300 pounds?
- rakoo 12y ago
  I take it you don't live in Europe. That's actually how it happens: when something costs $300 in the USA, you can bet it will cost 300€ here in Europe.
- mkohlmyr 12y ago
  I understood his point to be rather the opposite, that the real price (if you had an absolute global unit) of the product in one place does not necessarily correlate to other places. The fact that the numbers he used were both 300 is irrelevant. The point he is making is that the cost in Europe is higher for reasons beyond the physical cost of the product.

phonos 12y ago

just use VPN like hola.org to pay for dropbox and you're ok..

nly 12y ago

My heart bleeds for my continental cousins. Here in the UK it's been common to see the old $/£ sign switcheroo for decades.

brk 12y ago

Even for cloud-based services like dropbox, the cost of doing business in all countries is not the same. There are different laws/regulations to deal with, costs for having foreign-language support people, costs for internationalizing parts of the UI/etc. Personally, I think it's kind of odd to expect that something will cost the exact same amount anywhere in the world. It might be that the added cost for dropbox to do business in Europe just happens to be very close to the exchange rate, so they just change the currency symbol and call it "close enough". There are plenty of things that are more expensive in the US than they are in Europe.

chton 12y ago
The problem isn't just paying more. I'm aware of how tax-heavy europe is, and how much harder it is to support the wide variety of languages and laws. In most cases, I would be fine paying a bit more for a service. The problem is the way the mark-up happens. They're not calculating the difference and marking that up, they're literally just equating US dollars with euros. $99 and €99 might sound similar, but the difference is over 30%. There is no way the additional support costs run that high, so it comes across as just an attempt to pull a fast one on europeans. I'm sure if they did a proper calculation and gave a realistic number, nobody would complain about the increased cost.
- lucaspiller 12y ago
  Netflix and Spotify are the same. Spotify is £9.99 here in the UK, €9.99 in most of Western Europe and $9.99 in the US. Admittedly they have to deal with record labels so it's a bit different, but it's not really an excuse. Strangely Dropbox here is showing the price as $9.99.
  - mciancia 12y ago
    In Poland Spotify costs ~20zł which is just a little bit under 7$. So not always it's so bad
- sugerman 12y ago
  Who is to say they didn't do a "proper calculation" and result in something close enough to €99 that they just rounded up/down to keep things consistent?

dreen 12y ago

If you are in Europe I recommend hubiC instead of Dropbox. They are much cheaper and have servers in Europe (France - they are child company of OVH). Dropbox only has servers in America [1], so its slower. - 25GB free - 100GB 1€/m - 10TB 10€/m Yes you read that right, its TEN TIMES the space of Dropbox Pro, for the same price. Im not affiliated or anything, just a satisfied customer. [1] - https://www.dropbox.com/help/7 https://www.dropbox.com/help/7

rootinier 12y ago
Dropbox uses Amazon S3, therefore servers are located in Europe as well. EDIT: maybe my statement was a bit premature. I was confident Amazon was keeping mirrors, but it seems they only do this in the same region. Dropbox runs its own infrastructure network and uses AWS for storing files, both solely in the US.
- aidos 12y ago
  Do they use the European servers? It would be a lot more expensive from their point of view.
- Lazare 12y ago
  That doesn't follow in the slightest. Just because AWS has data centres around the world, it doesn't follow that Dropbox is using them. Do you have any sort of cite for your claim? Because the link in the comment you're replying to suggests that they store everything purely in the US.
- zuck9 12y ago
  They don't use S3 now. That was way long ago. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8233622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8233622
  - rootinier 12y ago
    Sync a file via Dropbox and run lsof -i, and you get something like this: ec2-54-221-232-10.compute-1.amazonaws.com:https EDIT: it may be that they use EC2 for their infrastructure, but not for actually storing files. But they still use AWS.

aikah 12y ago

I call it the "Apple pricing",where 1$ == 1€ .Why do businesses do that ? I'm pretty sure they'd ajust their pricing if 1€<1$. I get that one needs to adjust with local regulations,the cost doing business,localisation,... but still 1$ != 1€. (a few years ago, 1€ ~= 1.50$ , so much that people just flew to USA to buy expensive Apple gear,and it was still cheaper than paying the € price).

Swizec 12y ago
Or as is common now, at least one of your friends is always in the US and about to come home.
doodyhead 12y ago
Part of it is definitely that US prices are often listed exclusive of tax, while EU prices are listed inclusive, which instantly adds 20-30%. Granted, they still hike up the prices further in the EU and other markets, Australia being the most egregious example.
_delirium 12y ago
With Apple's market it seems inconsistent. There are some iPhone apps that are $0.99/€0.99/£0.99 or $9.99/€9.99/£9.99, but also many that are $0.99/€0.89/£0.69 or $9.99/€8.99/£6.99. Not an exact conversion, but not just swapping out the signs either. I think the app author gets to choose which of those two pricing schemes they want.

cookiecaper 12y ago

I was going to sign up for this on Friday, but it makes you buy a minimum of 5 licenses, so the lowest monthly payment is $75. I thought that was pretty lame so I started looking for something else. I tried ownCloud but it was not very happy with my PHP configuration so I quit that and ended up using Synology's Cloud Station and port-forwarding it. Costs $0 extra to me since I already have a Synology NAS, local storage, easy configuration that doesn't interfere with any existing services, and clients for mobile, Mac, and Linux (GUI only unfortunately). All of that would've been avoided if I could've just paid Dropbox $30/mo, but I guess I'm glad they priced themselves out by trying to force me to pay for 3 users that I'm not going to have for a long time.

mongemalo 12y ago
This. Nothing will replace my Synology and the amount of services it gives me. I already have two that backup each other. Best purchase of the year :)

antr 12y ago

Not unique to Dropbox but most software. This is why I have various Apple IDs. I purchase most, if not all, of the apps via the US iTunes store with my US Apple ID, given that many devs stills use $4.99 = €4.99. I only use a non-US Apple ID to download region specific apps: banking, local TV apps, etc.

Gonzih 12y ago

In Europe very small amount of companies does proper dollars -> euro conversion. Most of the time they just change label.

elorant 12y ago

It’s funny this is mentioned because just today I found out that the conversion rates at Asos.com from pound to euro are off by 12%. They calculate the conversion dividing by 0.70 instead of 0.79. So basically everyone buying products with prices based in euro is been ripped-off.

chrisseaton 12y ago
But there are no official exchange rates are there? So how can they be wrong? You must mean they're not as favourable as that which other companies are offering. In which case it's not a 'rip-off', it's just as good as deal as you might like it to be.
- zurn 12y ago
  Sure there are. Here's ECB's for example. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/exchange/eurofxref/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/exchange/eurofxref/html/inde...
  - chrisseaton 12y ago
    That's just an observation of the exchange rate as it appears to be between large banks. Nobody is required to offer it to you.

ferrullan 12y ago

The thing i love about Dropbox is that the more i use it the more extra space and "gigas"...they give me. As an early and heavy user (i've invited 20 friends or more so far) they want me happy and i can feel it. that's what i love. They are not charging me for anything,and they won't try it. they know what type of user i am (a happy user that invites all of its friends) so they treat me like the user i am. I am sure my extra space is billed on any friend i've invited to the platform..

jonifico 12y ago

I remember when Steam did this back in the day (not sure if it still happens today) and it was a total shame. Lots of people using proxies to get US pricing on the other side of the pond. Now, I don't really know how the whole taxing thing moves about, but, are foreign customers forced to pay taxes for these kinds of products since they're considered 'imported'? Or maybe, do companies feel they should get more money to keep operating abroad? I'm just trying to look for possible explanations, but we all know this is just a cheeky, greedy play from these companies.

Morphling 12y ago

Europe tax is real with every product. Like I was going to buy Lenovo laptop for work, but as soon as I said that I was from EU the price almost doubled.