Currency Exchange Rates
Fauvist
Posts: 2,152
in The Commons
Canada purchases more from the USA ( 292.6 billion $ ) than all of the countries in the European Union combined ( 267.6 billion $ ). At the moment, if you include the currency exchange rate and the percentages deducted as credit card or PayPal fees - Canadians are paying 30% more for everything purchased at DAZ3D - whether it's on sale or not. A 30% discount is actually no discount for customers in Canada.
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Just so i'm not confused, you would rather pay 60% more than Americans rather than 30%? That isn't how discounts work. No one figures in the trade balance when deciding to take 10% off a product.
That would be a factor of the payment provider you are using.
I'm curious. Does the currency conversion show up in the Daz store window? Or on the credit card bill? (Most places, I'd imagine the credit card/payment processor handles all the conversion.)
Do the prices on the Daz store show up in Canadian $ or USD? (That's probably a hint right there.)
Do Euro customers see prices in Euro or USD?
(Looking at the Fria Ligan website, which is based in Sweden (and one of the best tabletop RPG companies right now), they can show prices in Krona, USD, Euro, GBP... but I don't know what backend they have for their storefront or what they do for accounting. Their English translations are their own thing, sometimes jointly with UK or other publishers.)
At least this Euro customer sees prices in USD.
When they sell in USD, the customer bears the price and risk with exchange rates.
Daz can't help what the current exchange rates are, unfortunately.
Yeah, currency conversions suck for canada lol. Everything up here is like 40-60% more than what it would be in USD. Well everything but my paycheck at least :P
I'm not complaining, or blaming DAZ3D for anything. The prices on the site are $US. The extra 30% doesn't show up until I get to the PayPal payment page. The effect it has on my buying habits at DAZ3D is that I'm buying about 70% less. I end up taking around 75% of the items in my cart - out of my cart. Then going back to PayPal and paying for the products still in the cart.
The only reason I'm mentioning it is that half the time I remove everythig from the cart, or I just abandon the cart and buy nothing. Then DAZ3D sends me one of these "Uh-oh! Looks like you forgot something" emails telling me I forgot to pay for the items in my cart. DAZ - I didn't "forget" to pay for them. I just lose interest when I find out how much more I'm paying above the marked price. And this happens EVERY time I shop here.
Surely PayPal doesn't charge 30% currency exchange? Are youtreating 1CAD as being the same as 1USD, so any difference is a mark up?
At the moment the exchange rate is 1.00 US equals 1.25 Canadian, so an items that costs $16 US will cost you $20 Canadian, ouch. Not sure what is up with paypal, but you might want to direct this at them since DAZ has no control over it.
Not sure if you can get them in Canada (can't see why you couldn't), but have you thought about a travel pre-load credit card? They let you load them with foreign curency, which allows you to buy at an exchange rate that suits you, and gives you the knowledge that the rate is set for the lifetime of that card load. You'll also get a slightly better rate than letting your credit card or PayPal do the conversion at their chosen rate.
I know the downside is having the money upfront and not everyone can, but do it right and you can save money.
Not sure what the topic is about. Exchange rates? Those are outside Daz's control.
Taxes? Also outside Daz's control.
Credit card or paypal exchange fees? Again, outside Daz's control.
Is the suggestion to have all customers pay the exact same figure but in their own currency? Yes, I know some behemoths in various industries who do that, and it's really frustrating to pay Eur10 for some online subscription "because the price is $10 in the US". When I see those things, I generally use a VPN and check whether they use the same pricing system in Aus$, Israëli Shekels, and a few other foreign currencies. They rarely do, but I do tend to end up with the cheapest option available to me. And on those occasions where I do end up cheaper than their base US$ value, I'm happy to F them over it.
Gladly, Daz doesn't use such schemes with localized pricing, so I only need to keep an eye on exchange rates and fees.
For somebody who isn't complaining, you're doing a really good impression of somebody that is.
The prices here are marked in USD. I can see that if you live in another country that has its own dollar currency - Canada, Australia, NZ and a few dozen others - it's hard not to look at a price marked $10 and subconsciously think of it the same way as when you see an item priced $10 in your local store. But it's not the same, it's a different currency that has the same name.
You're not paying above the marked price (other than a small fee for currency conversion), the price is marked in USD and you're paying in CAD.
For me, incidentally, it works the other way round. I live in the UK, and the GBP is (just about) worth more than the USD. Although I don't have the currency name issue that you do, it's still hard not to look at a price marked $10 and think £10. It's nice to get to PayPal and find that it's less than 8 quid.
I'm in the UK and use my bank card for paying for anything outside of here. I use PayPal for internal buying occasionally. I stopped using PayPal for foreign currency payments as their exchange rate was way higher that my banks even with the 3% exchange rate bank charge. The bank uses the current market rate +3% that is current at the time of purchase.
I am in the uk and when shopping at the Daz Store I have another tab open in my browser with a google's currency convertor ready. I just type in the Store price and it tells me what it is in Pounds. I then mentally add in the extra few pence for my credit cards currency conversion cost. To be honest I can now estimate quite closely in my mind what the price in Pounds will be.
Different currency with the same name? I don't think so. The minimum wage in New York State is $15 an hour, and in Ontario Canada the minimum wage is $14.30 an hour. Using your reasoning, the minimum wage in Canada should be $19.50 an hour. Anyway, let's just forget I ever mentioned it in the first place.
New York and Ontario have different governments as well as different currencies, why would you expect them to have an equivalent minimum wage?
Furthermore, different US states have their own minimum wage, which are varying increases over the federal minimum wage, so you're also picking the state that has the highest minimum wage in the country (only DC's is higher, but they're not a state, which is a separate conversation). Some states, like Alabama, simply use the federal minimum wage, while Georgia and Wyoming actually have minimum wages lower than the federal minimum wage (which shouldn't be legal, but that's a separate conversation).
Canada's currency is the dollar. The US's currency is the dollar. They have the same name, yet are not the same currency. I don't understand which part of that fact you're taking issue with.