Unfair/Inaccurate Currency Exchange Rates When Buying Donuts

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.