Letter to Editor got me free subscription.

[Mychael]

We have a subscriber magazine over here called "Choice".
It's an independent consumers guide type thing.
Anyway I wrote in to the Editor about that experience I had with the price difference between here and the States when using Microsofts upgrade feature.
He liked the letter, published it in the "Letters To the Editor" section and gave me 12 months subscription.. Cool.

 

[clifford_cooley]

WOW - Thats cool!!

Do you have a link to the article?

 

[Mychael]

You cannot view their magazine online unless your a subscriber but I can scan in the page to show you if you wish. It's nothing fancy, I just basically related the same story there as I was talking about on forum here a few weeks ago.

 

[Mychael]

Here is the scan of the article.

 

[catilley1092]

That's one way of getting some attention on the matter. The more that speaks up, the better for all. Silence is acceptance.

Cat

 

[Mychael]

Seems the inequality extends further then just Microsoft products. Just reading the latest issue of Australian Macworld magazine and they are discussing the new Mac App Store (a good thing btw) for apps for your Mac in the same way as for your iphone and pad.
Anyway as an example a particular program if bought in the states would cost US$29.99 and yet the identical program purchased in Australia is $36.99. Granted not the huge discrepancy in pricing as you see with M/S products but the same principle applies.

 

[draceena]

Excellent article that seems to apply to many things as well as many countries. For instance, here in Canada our dollar is worth a bit more than the US dollar yet when I walk into the local book store I'll see a US price of $19 and a Canadian price of $25. When you question it you get a run-around answer that when the book was printed the dollar was lower, yada, yada. This may be true for older titles but even brand new titles just released will have the same rediculois pricing difference

 

[catilley1092]

I believe it's all BS. Because when I bought 2 separate items from eBay stores in Australia, and one in Canada, I had to pay a few more dollars than I would in US Dollars.

There are three examples in this thread of the "exchange rate", if you're in Australia, you pay more for US products. If you're in Canada, you pay more for US products. If you're in the US, you pay more for Australian & Canadian products (not counting shipping, which always costs extra).

It seems that companies charges whatever they want to charge for purchases from other countries, and uses the "exchange rate" to shaft the customer, regardless of where we may live.

Cat

 

[Kalario]

No one can defend Microsoft for this absurd practice. Not even our friend Digerati

 

[Nibiru2012]

Yupper!

In China you can get a legitimate Windows 7 Professional key for $28.00 or a full Retail boxed version for $60 so go figure! The reason I heard that the price was so inexpensive in China is because of the massive amount of pirating that goes on there.

So MS figured it would be better to get a slice of a much smaller pie than to not get any slice at all.