Like for the Norway case, people living in Switzerland are outside the Euro zone, BUT cakewalk force these customers to buy with the Euro price, which is supposed to include the EU tax!
And if I swiss guy buy the box edition, then I'll have to pay the custom taxes PLUS swiss VAT: thus these are paid twice!
But apparently Cakewalk guys don't know enough what EU is... European geographical zone DOESN'T equal EU zone!
I can't register on the USD store because Switzerland in not available in the country list! But I'm not part of the EU zone, so why should I pay the 20% VAT (which is the argument from cakewalk for justifying the exchange rate difference compared to USD...)?

This thread is showing how many people are angry about this situation

Bump!

Paging ANY Cakewalk rep..... you got a lot of frustrated customers here

Per

It's simple, I'm skipping this version - happy with 8.5.3p - until they price it right. The original poster is right ... people don't like being treated like idiots.

Bump! This is outrageous and deserves to be kept current IMO.

just a point for UK folk anyway, which I'm sure you all know.. as the buyer YOUR liable for any import tax / duty if you tried to buy from the US (i.e. like a US customer) or another country.. NOT cakewalk or another company that you bought off.

as for the VAT number / refund .. simple.. buy it from Digital Village as I'm pretty sure it'll be the same price. Was for me last time.

if you buy other things from US brands.. e..g Mackie , you see the difference also. I bought a mackie BK.. and before the tax increase it was £155 or something.. After £255! .. It might have changed since, but it's all companies that are US based.. go check something at say sweetwater and compare it to DV.. and you'll see what I'm getting at.

Fog

as for the VAT number / refund .. simple.. buy it from Digital Village as I'm pretty sure it'll be the same price. Was for me last time.

true as i stated above but it is still significantly greater than for every other country in the world.

I would like to see a CW rep chime in and provide some clarity.  Perhaps this is a contributing factor as to their popularity, or lack thereof, in the EU.

Bump!

Though I'm pretty sure we're fighting a lost cause here.
Cakewalk will continue to ignore our complaints and most of us will upgrade eventually...
But , I feel my loyalty towards Cakewalk is taking a hit for each annual upgrade.

I'm also frustrated with this, from several points of view.

First: As many of you, I've been a user and yearly upgrader since Sonar 2 or 3. So far back I can't even remember. Been there and stuck around during the motorboating era and such and always upgrading. So a policy to give every user their 5th or so upgrade for free would be a great loyalty reward.

Second: Considering ImageLine FLstudio, which I also own, has lifetime free updates and a full Reaper license costs less than a Sonar upgrade, I'm sure Cakewalk can do something for loyal customers without risk of going out of business. In fact it might stimulate prospective buyers to take the plunge and go for it. 

Third: Assuming that I would  be willing to fork over a reasonable amount to upgrade, I wouldn't want to be penalized just for living on the other side of the ocean. As pointed out by others, VAT, import duties etc don't need to matter if you organize things the right way. 

Real life example: 
I also own the US based Numerology sequencer, which I also plan to update in the near future. If you go to their store you can select the currency you like to pay in and currency fluctuations are reflected in daily price differences if you look at any other currency that the dollar. If the FED's 600 billion dollar injection into the US economy leads to a lower value of the dollar against the euro, the store will reflect these changes in lower euro prices. I can even choose to pay in dollars and have my creditcard company do the conversion instead of the online store if I'd want that.

The situation is the same: a downloadable upgrade to a software program from a US based supplier. So it can be done!

So I'm not going to upgrade to X1, I can afford it, but it just doesn't feel right. Sonar 8.5.3, flstudio and Numerology give me plenty of music making power anyway.

Twigman


Cake are just protecting the markets for their local distributors.
I'm sure the local distributors set the price at a level they believe the market can stand and Cake are merely offering product from their e-store at a price which will not undercut the distributors...I can see no other explanation....perhaps it's not Cakewalk we should be complaining to...perhaps it's Edirol UK?

This is the crux of the matter. Complain to the distributors, not CW. They cannot tell their distributors how to price the product.

SteveStrummerUK

Or to put it the other way round, it would be the same as the US price being over $144 instead of $99.
 
Steve 

Steve, I must point out like I did in a previous post,   it's not the US price it's the rest of the world price...
 
If you're in Russia, China, Australia, Eqypt, Iraq (do they sell there?) the price is $99

hey i can easily get it deleted, for example how bout i mention the new @*^& released today or the latest version of *(&^ which is sooooooooooo cheap....


oh but not in the UK obviously.

kson


I would like to see a CW rep chime in and provide some clarity.  Perhaps this is a contributing factor as to their popularity, or lack thereof, in the EU.

 
 
I've emailed them a few times over the past few years about their pricing to UK customers and yet to receive ANY sort of response.
 
They have responded to some of my other questions though.
 
That about say it all really.
 
 
Still.
Enough of you on this forum WILL pay it, say nothing, and CW will be happy.
Next year they'll do it all again... and once again enough of you on this forum will pay whatever they ask.
And so on, and so on.

John T


It's a weird thread this.

While obviously nobody enjoys the fact that the same goods typically cost more in the UK than in the US, you'd have to have been living under a rock to think this was some kind of Cakewalk specific thing. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, it really is the norm across the board.

With many companies it is easy to privately import into the UK after buying at the US (or rest of the world) price and be responsible for our own import duties and taxes. I've done it, people I know have done it...it's quite common to do it.

Cakewalk refuse to allow us to do that.

Why?

mgh


hey i can easily get it deleted, for example how bout i mention the new @*^& released today or the latest version of *(&^ which is sooooooooooo cheap....


oh but not in the UK obviously.

 
Priceless mate