EVE General Discussion

I was looking at getting more ETC and/or PLEX today and after checking the prices I was surprised to see that US users (well, anyone buying in USD) gain more than 1/3rd extra compared to their UK (GBP buying) counterparts - and 10% more than EU (EUR transacting) users.

Using the MasterCard exchange rates from a few mins ago, a pack of 6 PLEX costs:

USD: 104.00 - ($17.34/PLEX)
EUR: 105.50 - ($114.39 USD - 10% more expensive -- $19.07/PLEX)
GBP: 89.99 - ($138.95 USD - 34% more expensive - $23.16/PLEX)

Put another way, for every $104 spent, a US user gets 6 PLEX, an EU user gets 5 and a UK user gets 4.

Am I missing something here - or is this just blatant price gouging of non-US users? With regard to the game itself, does this not have a net effect of being huge subsidy from UK and EU users to US users in-game. US players get an additional 34% bonus game-time / training time or ISK (if people are selling PLEX) over every UK user and 10% over every EU one.

The above prices are from what a 6-pack of PLEX costs on Amazon US, France and UK respectively. I'm fairly sure are the same as the CCP website or as close to it as to not matter. Taxes do not seem to explain the difference as the discrepancy is simply way too much to account for it. Obviously there is no shipping costs involved either. The same gulf in value applies for purchases or any number of PLEX (1, 2, 6, 10 etc. etc.)

If I buy off the US Amazon site today, even including the commission from my bank for the transaction being in USD, its still 30% cheaper to buy PLEX in the US than in the UK.


NOTE: I'm not sure what prices are for Russian users or Japanese etc. but I'm not sure it matters much, what i've said above still applies.

Why would you buy gametime or PLEX in anything other than Dollars anyway?

Dont buy from CCP directly .... Especially when you know you're getting ripped off compared to other players.

Did you factor in US taxes?

The U.K. and EU are still more expensive, but with dollar fluctuation and sales taxes, it's not always as large as it seems.

That's beside the point - even between the rest of the EU and UK its a large disparity. Plus or minus 5 percent and I wouldn't really care, but there is still a >15% difference between EU and UK. The US disparity seems to just take the **** in how far out of whack it is.

If I bought 6 PLEX off of Amazon US now, how much sales tax would be added (on average - I get it varies state to state) to the $104 price listed?

If you don't have a US billing address? None, because you can't buy them from Amazon.com without one.

Ask me how I know.

At least one state that I know of lets you have a post office box without a state residency, regardless of where your actual residency is. Military guys use tricks like that all the time while deployed overseas, to purchase digital items.

It's called taxes. Blame your Government not CCP.

You can always buy from other US resident authorized resellers than Amazon. Problem solved.

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