Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended is one of the best pieces of software to be released in the past five years. It’s breathed new life into what we thought was a tired product, with excellent features such as embedded video and hassle-free collaboration.
But we’ve decided that it can’t get a PC Pro Recommended award for one simple reason: in the US, it costs $699. In the UK, it costs £619. With VAT, it actually costs £727 - more than the dollar price.
We’re well aware of the arguments given for prices being higher in the UK (and indeed the rest of Europe and Australia) than the US, and these might justify a 20% even 30% price hike. But almost 100%?
I asked Adobe about this directly, and its response was: “”We establish our prices in Euro, Yen, and USD on a regional basis using a consistent methodology. There are two primary influences on our pricing: our costs of doing business, and customer research that assesses the value of the product in the local market. Both of these influences vary significantly from one region to another.”"
And I can see the argument. As it happens I don’t blame Adobe. It’s a publicly listed company that by definition is always out to maximise its profit.
No, I blame us - the UK press that recommends the product and the people that go out and buy it.
After all, the key phrase is “the value of the product in the local market”. That will be based to a large extent on how many copies its research suggests it will sell if it releases Acrobat Pro, or any other product, at £619. And clearly, research shows that the British consumer will buy.
It’s only by people keeping their credit cards in their wallets (and, to a far lesser extent, publications like PC Pro highlighting the discrepancy) that Adobe will reduce its prices.
So, as Sir Alan Sugar would say, regretfully we won’t be giving Acrobat 9 the Recommended award it deserves in each and every other way.
Tags: adobe, rip-off, Software
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June 23rd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
This is what really aggravates me about the UK’s current market; basically, everything is ludicrously overpriced.
And most aggravating, we only have ourselves to blame seeing as there are so many people dense enough, or competitively obligated, to buy Adobe’$ products. I hope that Adobe doesn’t make a penny out of their new product and start imposing reasonable prices on upcoming software.
Seriously, we, the consumer, need to do something about overpriced merchandise at some point in time or companies and retailers are just going to continue looking upon us as cash-cows ready to be milked for everything we’re worth.
PS: I know if I want to utilize the latest and greatest I’ve gotta fork out the cash, but this is just ridiculous.
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Unfortunately the consumer always gets ripped off, but this affects small business equally as much. I have a company employing 3 people and wanted to use Acrobat because it performs better in many ways that its competitors. However the continual price rises mean I can no longer afford to, so I went to the US site of a competitor and downloaded their product (which is also a lot cheaper in the US than the UK), however whilst it does some things well its not a patch on Acrobat in others.
Whilst companies should clearly be able to offer discounts to volume purchasers I think a cap should be put in place. I recently had to buy some software from a German company and had to pay for 5 licences as it was their minimum order, and what’s more the licence fee is annual. I had no choice because this was the software used by our customer that gets a greater than 50% discount, so in effect per user we are paying 5x as much.
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Watch out PC Pro! The last magazine with any principles was BYTE 15 years ago, and it was killed off by the publisher. Principles don’t sell. Any monkey from marketing will tell you that. Personally I can’t believe my luck that there are still magazines around that aren’t shilling for some big-box retailer. Keep up the good work!
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:17 pm
The thing is, though, the UK consumer needs to buy SOME stuff, though. If we’re in the situation where everything costs too much, how do we bring everything down in price? Isn’t one of the problems the “must-have now-now-now” attitude that seems rather pervasive?
I can see three primary alternatives to buying this software in the mind of the UK consumer (not that I am condoning any of them): get an open-source alternative for free (even if it has few of the attractive features of the original), get an illegal copy (which, sadly, is probably what many will do) or buy it from abroad.
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Adobe’s Acrobat prices could do with having at least 30% shaved off them IMHO - though interestingly they are quite generous on upgrades, compared to Msft et al - usually only 1/3 of original price, so we usually do take the upgrade offer.
Plus they allow 2 activations (meant to be for e.g. desktop and laptop for same person).
So overall they probably aren’t the wors offenders.
June 23rd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Sadly, it’s punitive and profiteering pricing like this that has led to a lot of people seeking out warez versions as they simply can’t afford to buy the bona fide product that they’d actually like to. Hitherto, I’ve been very much on the side of always buying legal copies, but as I’ve given just so much of my money to these companies (particularly Adobe) with almost zero loyalty rewards, that I’m now reconsidering, as even the upgrade pricing structures simply take the P.
No longer will I be one of the mugs, and shall use either open source alternatives (where they exist) or sadly (and I really mean that) look for “alternative” sources of the commercial product. If I could buy at the US dollar price, then I’d shell out every single time. So, Adobe, it’s very much up to you.
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:38 pm
How about not letting software companies limit software distribution by market? License agreements should not be handicapped by geography. Is Adobe charging more in the UK? Then Ishould be able to import shrink wrapped, legal copies from the US at $699 and resell them in the UK (provided I pay the VAT)
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Why dont they just agregate the price over all countries? Also why dont they quit insulting our intelligence by pretending they have a fair method for working out the UK price - can anyone tell me when the price for ANYTHING is ever worked down in the UK market?
June 24th, 2008 at 5:38 am
It is cheaper for me to drive to the UK and buy Adobe products than it is to buy them from my local store… You think you have it bad!
It is even cheaper to fly to the States, stay in a five star hotel, dine in a good restaurant, buy a copy of CS3 and fly back home again, than it is to buy locally… Thinking of 50 copies? Time for the boss to make a trip to the US for the weekend.
I don’t use Acrobat, OpenOffice does all the document generation I need, luckily. Likewise, my Mac can print from almost any App to PDF.
The rest of CS3 is a bloated bug-fest (with the possible exception of DreamWeaver). Fireworks is the worst. Working on the 40-50MB documents we have, it ends up using over 2GB of memory. Then it crashes when trying to open a second document. Closing and opening doesn’t help much either, it requires a complete reboot of the PC between the larger images.
Oh, and they’ve changed the file format for Fireworks, which means if I edit a Fireworks image in CS3, the designers with their older MX versions lose formatting and all of the frame names are reset to “Frame 1″, “Frame 2″ etc.
June 26th, 2008 at 7:23 am
Bravo PC Pro! A brave and courageous decision that make your team worthy of a Customer Award. Stand up against IT companies that rip us off on the basis of the NEED for their product, rather than their WORTH.
Keep up the good work, you’re definitely going in the right direction.
June 26th, 2008 at 7:36 am
The rise of open source software has finally exposed the shortcomings of the ‘conventional’ software creation model.
The big software houses are in the business of making money, first and foremost, just like any other business, and therein lies the problem. Software quality (including ‘value for money’) is incompatible with the profit motive. Great software that doesn’t have any bugs would be far too expensive to produce by the usual route, so it isn’t. Instead, we are offered glossy boxes, exciting adverts, wild promises and high prices, at the centre of which is bug-ridden software that the customer is expected to beta test because the manufacturer didn’t want to.
The open source alternatives are not bug-free either, but they do the job and if you really don’t like them, you can move on without having wasted your hard earned cash. Oh, and you won’t be choking on sales bullsh*t either.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:54 am
It’s about now that we see the middlemen come in….
Buy it online at the American Adobe Store, then resell it on a site for UK/ (EU) people…
Just think: at £400/£450 a resell, that’s a £50/£100 profit per copy…
And if you made it all automated, that’s a couple of year’s income in the bag…
USA hosted webserver, here I come…. now where do I get an American credit card….?
June 26th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Hurray! At last a UK magazine standing up to Adobe. Well done PC Pro, this is appreciated. Now, if only we could persuade UK photography magazines to stop toadying up to Adobe. The chances of them printing tutorials for anything other than Photoshop seem pretty slim….
June 26th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
At last a writer with spine and literary balls in tact!!!
Adobe SHOULD have been reffered to the Office of fair trading years ago for PRICE FIXING. I took part in the consumer research they are talking about and it was a joke. I get to give more input when I’m testing Dog food for my Pet.
It really is long overdue for Apple to do for photographers what they did for Videographers when they made Final Cut Pro.
Acrobat is over priced in the US let alone the UK, don’t even get me started on splitting Photoshop into standard and advanced.
As ever I will underline the fact that the best way to get any adobe product is to contact a friend or relative living in the US or Canada, have them buy the product then ship it giftwrapped to your European address.
If they block this kind of import route, they deserve to be serial or keygenned off the face of the planet!!!
June 26th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Why Educational Discount on software is a good thing ~~~
Like many in the UK, I view the cost of software with horror. And I agree, it is not the cost of production and distribution that drives the UK prices, but rather “what the market will bear”.
Fortunately, not only am I a teacher, I have two children in education. Therefore I qualify in spades for educational discount on software. And this does bring the price down to a reasonable level.
Of course it is done for a reason ~ hearts and minds; able users in the market place; expectations set for the work environment to name a few.
Educational software is not ment for commercial use. But the licence does not run out when the student leaves education. And students can continue to upgrade from the educational version after they have left education.
I teach at foundation degree level. UK university courses cost approx £3300 per year. Adobe software educational discount means it costs 15%+ of the yearly course fee.
I don’t expect my multimedia students will throw Adobe software away when they leave university, especially those who work in the media area. Many work as contractors, so need to keep updating their skills. Buying at an educational discount and continuing to upgrade means they can keep their skills up to date at home, thus making them more employable.
So whilst I undersand the problem those in the commercial environment have with software pricing, don’t think of it as all doom and gloom. Educational discount means students leave college / university with exposure to and skills in the latest levels of software … which saves you starting training from scratch, thus saving you money you can put towards …. buying the software!
June 28th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Is it just me or doesn’t the phrase “…regretfully we won’t be giving Acrobat 9 the Recommended award it deserves in each and every other way.” amount to a recommendation by PC PRO anyway?
June 29th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I’d say its a fair position John, because it is only pricing that’s under the spotlight for criticism in this case. The software is excellent AFAIK.
IF we were looking at Photoshop or Ilustrator, then I would be wanting the Mag to mention how buggy the product can be for many users also, but that’s a different product for a different thread.
July 30th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
This isn’t regarding Acrobat, but another Adobe product: Lightroom.
I am a happy user of Adobe Lightroom 1. This week they released a significant upgrade which includes some useful enhancements. I went to purchase the upgrade, knowing full well that Adobe’s upgrades aren’t “cheap”. However, when putting the upgrade into my “shopping cart” I noticed that the VAT rate they are charging is 21%! Have I missed something somewhere or has VAT suddenly changed - is this fraudulent activity on their behalf?
July 30th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
@Junket No, VAT hasn’t changed - but the odd way that all these shenanigans work means that if a company is registered in a country (in this case Ireland for the European arm of Adobe) then you’re liable for that country’s VAT charges. You can claim it back if you’re a VAT-registered business, not if you’re an individual.
There’s an interesting argument about this (and more) over on the Adobe forums too:
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?14@@.59b5f71e/13
July 31st, 2008 at 7:24 am
Aha! The 21% is because the software is downloaded from Ireland - the VAT rate in Ireland is 21%. I can’t argue with that!
February 6th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
[...] Danton, had been so incensed by the pricing difference for Acrobat 9 Pro Extended that he started a rip-off pricing [...]
February 6th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
[...] Danton, had been so incensed by the pricing difference for Acrobat 9 Pro Extended that he started a rip-off pricing [...]