Unfair/Inaccurate Currency Exchange Rates When Buying Donuts

I don't think it is about punishing those in other countries at all, more likely it is about EA setting the overseas prices at a consistent level. The exchange rate is changing every day, but the price of donuts in the store never changes ... a boatload in the US has always been $100 and in the UK £69.99 (today's exchange rate would be £61.19). They will want to set the prices at a level where the exchange doesn't become an issue, which inevitably means overestimating the overseas price to some extent.

The other factor is that there is a fee for every currency exchange, and as we all have a local appstore which we pay in our local currency, EA has to stand the cost of that fee, so I imagine they take account of that as well.

These are all things not unique to EA ... in fact most of the products on the iTunes store suffer from the same issue, in my experience .

Could be worse ... most of the time products from the US hit the UK's shores with a US price of, say $200 and sell here for £200.

We're talking a 25% mark-up here! not a few % exchange rate :lol:

They should just leave the price as US$ and let the consumer pay the exchange rate themselves with their credit card...this is how everything else works in internet shopping all over the world


oh well...i guess they want less international customers

all you guys in the UK and Euro are seriously happy about paying 20-25% more than your US friends? :x

it is ridiculous to cite exchange rates as a reason for the price difference - credit card exchange rates are only a few %, even a paypal transfer is 4% or so..this is the upper end, even the smallest of businesses actually transfer money at 1-2% via a money exchange company....we're living in 2014 :roll:

Personally i won't ever buy donuts unless they put everyone internationally on a fair playing field.....all they need to do is leave the price as US$ regardless of location, and then the customer can suffer the exchange rate themselves depending on their credit card


come on EA :evil:

chrisgyo wrote:
it is ridiculous to cite exchange rates as a reason for the price difference - credit card exchange rates are only a few %, even a paypal transfer is 4% or so..this is the upper end, even the smallest of businesses actually transfer money at 1-2% via a money exchange company....we're living in 2014 :roll:

You are not talking about exchange rates, you are talking about fees/commission. Exchange rates are the actual values of one currency when converted to another, which change constantly. In order to create a consistent price, EA have chosen to over estimate the rate at which overseas currencies are exchanged for US dollars so that they don't lose out. As most businesses do, in fact.

Personally i won't ever buy donuts unless they put everyone internationally on a fair playing field.....all they need to do is leave the price as US$ regardless of location, and then the customer can suffer the exchange rate themselves depending on their credit card


come on EA :evil:

That isn't EA's doing. It is Apple's business model that says I have to buy apps, music, movies, etc. from the UK store, using UK currency, and not the US one. I would be quite happy to pay for my donuts (on those rare occasions that I buy them) through the US store in US dollars and pay the fees for the currency exchange, and I am sure EA would be happy with that too, because then they have their consistent price, and no currency exchange fees to worry about.

Don't get me wrong, I wish donuts were cheaper across the board, and EA controls that, so I am not defending them, but the fact that we can't buy in the native currency and avoid exchange rate issues altogether is not their doing. The blame for that lies with Apple's infrastructure (and presumably Google's as well).

Although there isn't a version of Tapped Out for the Windows platform, their app infrastructure is the same ... UK store, UK currency, slight increase in cost for UK purchases when compared to the prices in USD.

This is a problem with closed architectures, controlled by the OS vendor, which didn't exist when I could go to a software company in the US and download direct from their website in their native currency.

thanks for explaining...what a joke

maybe one day i'll go on holiday to the US and buy some donuts while i'm there :|



EA could actually make things fair by reviewing their prices every now and then to make sure they're closer to the US dollar. I can't think of any other product i've seen on apple stores with such a huge difference

Fibi391 wrote:
I may be wrong but I think the difference is actually explained by taxes. It's my understanding that our European friends usually have prices quoted as the after-tax price, while here in the US business typically (and TSTO in particular) quote the before tax price.

Actually, that's a good point. The £69.99 you pay in the UK for a boatload is the full price including any taxes, so if it has VAT in there (20% in the UK) then the amount of that payment that goes to EA is actually only £58.35, which is less than $100 at today's exchange rate.

What I don't know is whether VAT is charged on in-app purchases like these ... although eBooks are subject to it where physical books are not so it certainly would not surprise me. I don't have a receipt to hand to check though.

interesting!

so how much is sales tax in the US? so the quoted price of US$100 for a boatload of donuts comes to a total price of how much gross?

it's quite complex

ah screw it, i think i'll buy a boatload anyway :lol: inflated price or not, i have an itch

Try living in Australia where we get screwed for everything...