MSDN Pricing
Saturday, October 13th, 2007I was looking to purchase a couple of new MSDN subscriptions for work recently and discivered something interesting. We were looking to purchase Visual Studio Professional MSDN Professional subscriptions.
The first interesting thing is that the pricing is the same for DVD and online distribution. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, the DVDs cost something to produce. The more interesting thing is the pricing around the world.
Go here and select Australia in the top right corner. Click on Buy direct from Microsoft and select the appropriate subscription. Price: $2084.
Now, go back to the first page and change to United States. Select “How to Buy”, select “Buy or renew MSDN Subscriptions directly from Microsoft” under “Buy from Microsoft” (you might need to clear cookies for this). Select the appropriate subscription level. Price $1199 US.
Converting that to AUD comes to $1,326.33. Even adding GST on only brings it up to $1458.96. Given that this is distributed online, there is no difference between distributing this product in Australia or the US. This is flat out ripping people off by over $600. Now it is possible that Microsoft hasn’t caught up with the freefall of the US dollar, however in a global market this seems pretty silly.
I rang Microsoft (I do this occasionally, it doesn’t make any difference but I think it should be done) and a rather helpful guy couldn’t come up with a explanation. He did say I could buy a US subscription, but I would need to use support from the US.