Feldon If you live in the U.S. and play EQ2 (or FreeRealms), then even if you’ve never purchased any, you know that 1,000 SC costs $10. Furthermore, there was a promotion a few weeks back where you could redeem retail-purchased StationCash cards for double credit. 1,000 SC were just $5 for a weekend.
So you may be surprised to learn that in Europe 1,000 SC costs $17.63. That’s 10 Euro for 1,000 SC plus 17.5% VAT (VAT should be 15%). I mean exchange rates are a pain, but the U.S. Dollar has been weak for over 2 years now. Remember when the Canadian dollar was maybe 60 cents on the U.S. Dollar? Now they’re almost equal. For a few months, Canadian was more valuable.
To get around this problem, it used to be possible to pay in U.S. Dollars using a Visa or other payment technique, but SoE added an additional check to require Euro depending upon your address. What a completely unnecessary change!
If you live in Europe, or want to commiserate, you may want to check out this thread.
Thanks for highlighting this thread.
I have complained about it before and got depressed/disgusted at the amount of people who seemed to think the problem is “the exchange rate”. The issue is that Sony is ignoring exchange rates and overcharging us both on the turn (making a healthy profit from the exchange) and a straight-forward 2.5% profit on a tax on every purchase.
The current thread seems to have the same issue dogging it. 🙁
This issue is not exclusive to Europe. Us colonials down in Australia have the same frustrations. Currently the Aussie dollar trades at around .92 against the USD yet 2500SC = $40AUD, someone explain that one because I can’t. SOE are giving us Aussies an exchange rate of roughly .65 and no we don’t have VAT or any other taxes to factor in.
A guild mate and I went on somewhat of a crusade about 12 months back to petition SOE to correct Aussie subscription fees to a more equitable level in parity with real world exchange rates. SOE handled the matter very poorly feeding us big mouthfuls of lies constantly blaming the problem on a local tax that they were unable to detail, itemise or even give this supposed tax a name.