Why is DoV pre-order far more expensive for International players?

Soresha wrote:

Prices in the US do NOT include Sales Tax, simply because there are so many different taxing jurisdictions, each with individual tax rates ranging from 0% to ~10%. I live in Washington State, one of three states in which SOE has a physical presence. When my DoV entitlement is charged, I will be paying $59.99 plus 9.5% Sales Tax for a grand total of $65.69

Edit: Sales Tax is charged at the rate set by the customer's taxing authority.

This is all for the DoV all in one pack. Would someone care to explain to me why I would possibly want to buy all of the previous expansions again? Whatever happened to only paying for the latest expansion like we did with DoF and KoS?
I was narked off enough with having to do this with Sentinel's fate. Really SOE, other games don't charge full price for expansions, some even give them for free. If you want to compete with other games you should be pulling in new revenue from new customers through advertising, not squeezing as much as you can from your current customerbase.
At the moment, a new player can come and spend £29.99 and have the same access to all the zones that I can access (supposedly what this expansion pack is for) meanwhile over the lifetime of the product i've spent over £220 in expansion packs already, not including what I spent on my wifes account, and certainly not including the subscription fees.
I thought the idea of competeing was to offer better value for money than your competitors?

Soresha wrote:

Sales tax should only be applied if both the buyer and seller are in the same state and that state has sales tax. There are some complex situations if buying via a 3rd party but that really just shifts the seller to said 3rd party.
If I ever get charged sales tax from ANY purchase from the USA I'd complain because they have no basis to charge me a state sales tax.
VAT or as we call it here GST is a type of sales tax. The difference being VAT and GST can be claimed back if you are on selling.
IE Say I buy a product and pay VAT/GST. I sell the product and collect GST/VAT. The government does NOT get both set of taxes paid. The government credits the first set of VAT/GST back to the middle man. GST and VAT can be applied to products coming into the country but in such cases is not collected by the seller but by customs. Sony have offices in the UK so are subject to collecting those prices directly even if you try to order the product directly from the USA. State taxes work the same. If I'm in Massachussetts dealing with a company from MA I am not supposed to goto a branch in Vermont to escape sales tax. Very greay area though as there is no law against me going over the boarder and making the purchase. But if I'm having the product delivered...that paper trail is the grey area and if that company was audited and found they where bypassing state sales tax by using a out of state branch then they'd be in a lot of trouble and if the amounts was enough then look for the state coming after the buyers too.
So I'm glad for the UK players which are on par with the USA...to bad the same can't be said for the Aussies...
I've bought my copies from Direct2Drive and avoided the extra $6 a copy sony wanted to charge me. So I save $12 and Sony looses probably $60. In the end SOE get about $32 from me instead of a being fair and charging me equally and getting $80. In the end they probably don't care about the $48 they lost from me because enough other people will still buy it at $46 a copy from them that it won't matter.

Velerak@Runnyeye wrote:

It might seem unfair but think of it this way. You pay a premium for getting the content first. Honest I wouldn't want a new player to have to pay as much as I did over the last 6 years. I mean who in their right mind would come in 6 years after the fact and pay a few hundred dollars for a game so they could play with their friends?
With falling subscriptions if expansions where free we wouldn't see them this size.
Just my 2cents worth
Remember if you are an international customer get a fair price and order from a 3rd party!!!!

Reztarn wrote:

Nah, I wouldn't like to think a new player would have to spend that much just to get to play, but I would like to think that being a loyal veteran player that I would expect not to have to buy the whole product each time there's an expansion when we used to pay 19.99 for expansions a few years ago.
In reality, SOE should do four products for DoV:
Standard Pricing:
Full Collectors edition
Full Standard edition
Reduced pricing and only adds the DoV zones to your account just like DoF did:
Collectors Upgrade edition
Standard Upgrade edition

Ekaunek@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I did not pay any sales tax at all because Texas does not yet tax digital downloads. If I had purchased a physical box I wold have paid the 8.25%.
What gets taxed varies from state to state, much like the variance within the EU. Using a VAT makes it difficult to show what you are being charged and makes it difficult for the retailer to explain how their product is being taxed. Having the tax paid after the price makes it more transparent.

Velerak@Runnyeye wrote:

You're not paying for the whole game, you're paying for the annual expansion which has always been $40. The only reason DoF and KoS were $20 is because they were half year expansions. You bought both in one year: 2 x $20 = $40.
If they stopped doing inclusive packages guess how much the expansion would cost? Yep, $40. The only difference from that point being that you could pretty much kiss any new players goodbye since the cost of playing the game with friends would be totally prohibitive.

I'll go for d2d. There's no reason to wait for any price adjustments because the ce items are crap anyway, and no way i'll pay 75 dollars which is the current price for me.

Chakos wrote:

I am glad someone like you responded.

SOE is apparantly charging a set VAT rate (20%). The issue is, EU countries have different VAT rates/percentages depending on country, but this is not reflected in pricing. VAT values range between 5% to 25%.

So someone in a country where the VAT is below 20%, is actually being charged a higher rate by SOE, in order to "pay" a tax at a rate that they should not actually be paying. When this occurs, who gets the extra money (if SOE actually gives the respective government anything at all)?

If pricing truly was varied due to tax requirements, the cost of the game should be different for every EU country that has a different VAT percentile. As it is not, the question is legitimately raised.

I hope this is not too complicated for you to understand, Chakos? I'm going to hazard a guess that you are an American?

feldon30 wrote:

they already have one in Texas
http://www.manta.com/c/mm6cx2f/sony...e-entertainment

Avirodar@Oasis wrote:

Yep, I am an American, and proud of it -- your implied insult notwithstanding.
As you yourself said, VAT values range between 5 and 25%, yet SoE charges a flat 20%. It is easy to understand they do this for the sake of simplicity -- so some are going to pay more, some less, than they should be.. SoE just avoids themselves the hassle of pricing for every single country. So when someone in a country with a 25% VAT purchases the game, SoE is still required by law to turn that amount over to that government. Whether they come out ahead or behind is anyone's guess, as SoE no doubt pockets / pays the overall difference, though it is likely ahead.
Bottom line is, as one poster suggested, buy from SoE directly or find a less costly alternative.
As far as it being a legitimate question, you're not fooling anyone -- you don't ask for the sake of legitimacy, but due to being self righteous.

Wingrider01 wrote:

SOE has a game development site in Austin, not a retail outlet. They are different critters.
Edit: The Supreme Court of the US says retail outlet, but Texas is claiming that Amazon's distribution center is a de facto retail outlet.

Thank god we don't have to pay sales tax for SOE's basis in CA.
Just a little example of something I found out when I got a new cellphone. I got my droid for $30. This was from a rebate of upgrade every 2 from verizon. Had I been a resident of CA. I would have had to pay their sales tax on the retail value of the phone.
That means I would have spent more money in Taxes then the cost of the phone.

If you think VAT is bad.. you haven't seen Cali lol. Though the overpricing thing going on with DoV needs to be fixed for yall. I think they did mention they were working on it. Though if they don't get it worked out, don't buy it. Seriously, unless you've got a disposable income, I wouldn't bother. There's better things to spend money on.

Chakos wrote:

If that is the case then SOE is breaking the law. They can't just "make up the difference" on the short fall countries and pocket the difference in the other countries.
There are legit reasons some people could claim VAT back. SOE could say this price is VAT inclusive, but they are still required to give the price break down seperately for each country they are required to pay VAT in.
The fact is SOE's decision is largely a marketing decision. They think they can charge some people more because they are used to it. They are quickly finding out that a number of us are sick of being treated like this an they'll loose money in the end because of it. Like me. They've lost $48 of revenue from me because they tried to squeeze out another $12 out of me even after they "adjusted" the Aussie price.

Taemien@Lucan DLere wrote:

They've "fixed" it. The UK version seems to be about right now from what I've been reading, tho I've not done the maths myself. The Aussie price is still inflated for no reason by $6 a copy. So I bought mine from Direct2Drive.
Saddly this means Sony get even only about $16 for per copy of the expansion instead of the full $40 they could have if they didn't try to stab me for $46.

Lateana@The Bazaar wrote:

Most states view software to be tangible personal property (subject to sales tax), which must be fungible (i.e., prepackaged, prewritten or "canned"), as opposed to customized software developed in a service transaction to meet the needs of a particular customer. By their definition - eq2 digital download is taxable at the state level if the state is one that views software to be tanagible personal property. It is nothing but a tangled mess when it comes to taxes on electronicly delievered software, there are very few states that agree on the rules. where it is taxable in one state, it may not be in another. The one thing that appears to be in agreement is where it is hosted is under the regualtions of the state that it is in is considered a retail outlet.

Can we get also a statement about the monthly fee ? 15USD is far from 13,50EUR....

I am curious, what UK regulation are you using to justify charging taxes for digital downloads? Since we are all aware it is illegal to collect taxes without paying them and from what I've seen there is not a regulation to cover this I must then believe Sony can provide the exact Tax regulation for this charge.
I would feel much better about paying the extra 20% which is indeed to appropriate amount for regular sales transactions for physical items if you can provide me the actual tax law from the UK that requires you to charge sales tax for digital downloads.

Thank you kindly for your help with this.

PS. Thank you for not making your international customers wait until nearly the last minute for any type of option. It is much appreciated.

Reztarn wrote:

They didn't fix anything for people paying in Euro's. Why do Brits and Aussies get adapted prices but Europayers don't?
Think I'll also go to Direct2Drive, no CE for me then

Avirodar@Oasis wrote:

Wrong! The EU minimum standard rate of VAT is 15%. No Government can set a standard rate at less than this.
This is the reason so many online retailers are headquartered in Luxembourg, because they have a 15% rate (eBay, Amazon etc)
However, also there is EU legislation that says if VAT is paid on a sale in any EU country, which is not the customers country, it is to be counted as VAT paid, even if VAT is charged at a different rate. As Sony's European Headquarters are all based in London / Weybridge and SOE is a business unit of their PlayStation division (registered office Golden Square, London), they are fully entitled to charge 20% VAT for all UK / EU customers, as I am sure that if you read the legal nitty gritty, that is likely to be your contractual partner.
If you do not understand the complexities of cross border sales and the VAT implications, it is probably best not to post!