The Reality Distortion Field at work

[drplokta]

In January this year, Apple agreed that within six months it would revise its pricing on iTunes to bring the UK price of 79p per track more into line with the Eurozone price of 99 cents -- when the original complaints were made, the Eurozone price was around 70p, so 79p was over 10% more expensive. Apple have now done it, three months early, and without changing their pricing at all -- 99 Euro cents are currently worth 78.9p.

Comments

[andrewducker]

That's fantastic!

Short of constantly changing either their Euro or UK prices, how exactly are Apple supposed to keep the prices the same?

I suppose they could sell to UK customers in Euros, but I'm not sure that would go down well either. Maybe if they offered people the chance to buy in either Euros or Pounds, depending on which one they liked more...

[evil-mogwai.livejournal.com]

the can price in one and use a daily/weekly/monthly updated macro to convert the price if you choose another currency.

I'm sure i've used other sir=tes that do that.

[drplokta]

Well, no, they can't. Their agreements with the record companies presumably specify payment in local currency, and their margins are wafer-thin, so if they let you pay in Euro in the UK, then a 2% shift in the exchange rate would drive them into loss.

[guybles.livejournal.com]

Clearly, we'll be laughing in a few more weeks when the BSBEs are paying more than us for their music.

OTOH, we'll be weeping because the Americans are still paying 99¢ = 49.8p. Bah.

[evil-mogwai.livejournal.com]

well then they can price at the local currency of the record company and use that as the base currency for those tracks then...

Or just spend half an hour a month to have a meeting, check the rates and make a decision and post a new rate in each currency available.

Anyway they just dont want to deal with it and will probably spend a weeks worth of time having meetings about how to deal with the publicity issue and not fix the problem in probably a much shorter time.

And yes... I am a cynic!

[troublebrewing.livejournal.com]

Oh no, it is we Americans who are weeping over the ruin of our economy and our country. At least don't begrudge us our 99 cent tunes. I recall traveling abroad (or even up to Canada) when my dollar actually bought me something...

--Hope