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Are Adobe ripping us off?


Guest Brivtech

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Guest Brivtech

I was looking at getting Dreamweaver CS3 (I know, there's a CS4 out soon). I don't have an old version to officially upgrade, so I have to buy new, fair enough.

So, price on Adobe USA's website was $399.00 - Which in English money is approx. £222.64 (at today's exchange rate).

Now, thinking this didn't seem too bad, I went to the UK version of their site, and thought I saw a mistake - The UK price was £405.35!

How can Adobe justify the extra £182? That's almost double the US price for the same thing. It doesn't even cost that much in postage and administrative costs.

Also, the US version was a 613MB version, yet the UK version was only 286MB!

Is this for real? Really doesn't seem fair to me.

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I was looking at getting Dreamweaver CS3 (I know, there's a CS4 out soon). I don't have an old version to officially upgrade, so I have to buy new, fair enough.

So, price on Adobe USA's website was $399.00 - Which in English money is approx. £222.64 (at today's exchange rate).

Now, thinking this didn't seem too bad, I went to the UK version of their site, and thought I saw a mistake - The UK price was £405.35!

How can Adobe justify the extra £182? That's almost double the US price for the same thing. It doesn't even cost that much in postage and administrative costs.

Also, the US version was a 613MB version, yet the UK version was only 286MB!

Is this for real? Really doesn't seem fair to me.

This is nothing new. Microsoft plays the same game. American businesses just don't understand exchange rates.

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Guest Brivtech

After this, I agree! Especially when they remove half the software that you buy. I actualy downloaded Aptana last night as an alternative to Dreamweaver, but it's still not quite as good (although I recommend it to anyone starting off in programming).

I'm thinking of buying Dreamweaver CS4 it when I go to Mexico at Christmas. They have some great deals at the market stalls there!

I have an idea - I'm going to start charging my US customers double of what I charge UK customers to make up for having to pay double from US software vendors.

There should be international laws against this!

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Why to pay so much for a software? I think software must be free.

Alex, do you offer YOUR services/products for free?

I agree with Brivtech that prices should be fair to all customers, but free is rarely fair to those who create something of value.

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The gap is a little less now that the exchange rate has dropped to 1.7/1.75.

You also have to add tax to the American prices as each state has varying tax rates.

However, I do agree it is a rip off but they will say costs are higher in the UK.

If you are VAT registered you also save 17.5% of the UK prices.

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Guest Brivtech

Al,

To even the score why not have a cheaper CC price for UK :sourcerer::)

And not forgetting to strip about half of the files out as well.

I wonder what Dreamweaver's missing 400MB of files was made up of? Perhaps patriotic website templates?

I've decided to wait for the new version that's about to be released, and probably buy it in Mexico at the US price. Funny how Mexico pays the same as the USA, although they speak another language, but we pay double and speak the same language. That's Internationalisation for you I suppose.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Guest texanweb

I can get all of this at my college.

Adobe® Acrobat 8 Professional: $50.00

Adobe® CS 3 Design Standard: $250.00

Adobe CS 3 Web Standard: $250.00

Adobe Photoshop CS3 (MAC\Windows): $175.00

Adobe CS 3 Master Collection (MAC/Windows): $500.00

Since CS4 just came out, I am not expecting them to start handing it out until next semester or even until next summer. So basically what I am saying is if you go to a college, especially at a university like I do, the chances are you can get discounted software at a great price.

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As a long time Adobe user, I started with Dreamweaver in Version 3, I have had to upgrade from a student edition as I finished my college course, the up grade wasn't too bad as I worked on a PC.

My biggest shock was when I went for CS3 for my new MAC I purchased the Web Professional CS3 it was twice as expensive as the MAC cost, what made me even more annoyed was that I had to also purchase the up grade for my PC - When Dreamweaver was available in the studio edition you could install it on both systems without the extra cost.

I think it is totally unfair that we now have to pay for each system, I will only be upgrading the MAC suite this year, as it really isn't cost effective.

One thing I would say is that if you are selling websites professionally in the UK it is illegal to supply a product to a client that has been built on Student registered software if you are selling for profit. Trading standards and the Inland Revenue can at any time visit your premises without prior permission and check your software licenses - They can confiscate your computer equipment - It really isn't worth it

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Trading standards and the Inland Revenue can at any time visit your premises without prior permission and check your software licenses - They can confiscate your computer equipment
Can they? it's news to me. What authority/expertise do they have in software licencing? Are you sure you're not thinking about FAST or similar who prey on businesses.
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Guest Brivtech

When we've had audits done in the past, the (independent) auditors have asked to see software licenses, or at the very least, purchase receipts to covering the software. We ended up having to purchase a copy of sage as we were using a bootlegged "trial" version to satisfy them. They didn't want to send the fraud squad in or anything like that, but gave us the opportunity to correct the problem before they submitted their audit to Inland Revenue, who I guess could have considered it as some kind of tax evasion. Bear in mind that this was back in the late-90's, laws regarding software have since tightened up considerably.

There were a whole load of new internet-related laws that came into enactment as of last August. I'll have a dig through and see if I can pick out any that refer specifically to licensing, because obviously it's relevant to CC and would be useful to you Al.

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Hmm that is interesting.... (gets out credit card)...

Selling software we have to not pee on our own doorstep so all our software is of course licensed properly. :)

However we no longer use Adobe software aside from Fireworks. We use Macs with Transit and Coda on our machines and then free Linux software LAMP & Subversion.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Wouldn't they need some kind of police warrant? I don't think they have that kind of power?! :)

As to the IR they can enter any business premise without a warrant, they actually have greater powers than even the police - I was married to a Solicitors agent who used to do work for the IR and VAT office and they basically can do anything they like if they suspect some form of fraud. That is why as a business we are expected to keep all forms of invoices and receipts for 7 years and to be able to produce them for audit without prior notice.

As for Trading Standards, they again can audit a business and it's services normally if there have been a series of complaints or if you wish to join their Trading Standards Scheme Buy with Confidence, they do require police backup if entering a premises, unless the audit is part of a cross services investigation.

The sad thing is that most of the software producers have cottoned on to the fact that Licensing is a requirement under EU and UK law so they can charge whatever they fancy.

One of the only ways to side step the licensing is if you are studying a certified course which requires specific software, in this particular instance you can use educational licenses until such time as you are qualified, but you aren't supposed to sell any work carried out for profit.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Guest JamesGarry

I guess a lot depends on the area or establishment where you buy these items from, but where I live a small bottle of water cost 50P with coke approx 70p.

A little under 1 US $ and a little over 1 US $

Another important consideration for Adobe is that the EU population is almost 500 million as against the USA of almost 300 million. Admittedly the the EU we have quite a number of different languages.

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