Battling Swiss woman starts petition against Adobe

Software should be cheaper in Europe

One of the excuses quoted in the past as a reason why *hardware* costs more in Europe than in the USA is that Europe (quite rightly) has stringent pollution control regulations which oblige manufacturers to make arrangements for the recycling of their old equipment, and this represents an extra cost which is passed on to the consumer.

However, software patents are not legally valid in Europe. Therefore, no royalty or licence fees should be necessary in respect of "patented" software in use there. Why isn't this cost saving being passed on to the consumer?

Hardware Piracy No Surprise

With the already high US$ prices for some software, the increasingly 'rip off' European prices just invite attention, and the attention that they get is that of piracy. A quick scan of ebay at weekends shows that you can purchase fully working copies of most software for literally a few £ or $. Whilst I do not subscribe to software piracy, the opportunity to save several 1000% is tempting to many.

Of course the high prices do not justify piracy, nor are they the only cause, but they are a reason why many people, otherwise honest and law abiding people, may choose to buy a copy of adobe at around £10 from ebay, rather than pay the additional markup several hundred pounds for a UK version that is in American (color !!) English anyway.

UK English

'There is even justification, perhaps, for a small price increase where different languages must be supported. However, UK customers who would mostly be happy to use unmodified American-English software'

Whether we are happy to use American or not most software does not bother with UK English, so any claims that some of the UK's extra costs are based on translation are ridiculous.

Could we have this for all software? MS needs it too.

Surely we shouldn't single out one software manufacturer. MS is almost as bad, but the only complaints the EC looks into are those brought by other software manufacturers. Surely consumers should get some representation? We're paying double the price for vista in the UK as in the US, and all Bill G can say is he didn't know what the current exchange rate is....

Should we petition the prime minister?

I think there is probably a larger under current of discontent in the UK and Europe about this issue, I took up the issue with Corel about their pricing plans for Pain Shop Pro where they were charging similar inflated priced on their web site.

I even tried purchasing if from the US site, having it send to someone I knew in the US thinking they could ship it to me but it would not accept my UK credit card details – thus you have to pay the US price!

I think all reasonable people will understand there are shipping costs etc but do they justify the price hike and how can any honest company justify the price hike for a downloaded piece of software, the smaller developers do not seem to make such outrageous charges for international customers, this is simply corporate greed!

When I read this article I immediately thought someone should start a petition for the prime minister at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ a quick search found that someone had already started one albeit small so far

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http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Software-Prices/

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Reduce or 'bring into line' software prices so that software sold in the US should be of a similar price to software sold in the UK. More details

Submitted by Matt Lakin – Deadline to sign up by: 08 March 2008 – Signatures: 29

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All those reading this article should probably sign this petition and get it going, I think we have all had enough of being ripped off

Price my a**

Somewhere, someone said that the price difference was due to support & localisation, and an El Reg reader noticed that the UK versions were still in American...

I have just shoved a note on my blog with a couple of price comparisons between the US, UK and France Adobe.com shop pages, and some prices are cheaper (translated) in France! (but ok, only by a percent or so), but after a 160% markup, that is still taking the piss!

Anyone who can speak French (or read a spreadsheet) can look here for % differences between Adobe products from the US, UK and Europe: http://www.danielpage.com/archives/32

Cheers,

Daniel