Ever since Apple launched its service in the Europe, it decided to charge customers in the UK a flat rate pricing of 79p while it charges the rest of Europe €0.99 where its service is available. However £0.79 works out about €1.15 or 15% more than the price charged elsewhere in Europe. While Apple may charge what ever it likes in different countries, the problem is that Apple refuses to allow its customers to purchase music from its other European stores to avail of the cheaper pricing.
Back in September 2004 Which, a consumers's assocation complained to the Office of Fair Trading regarding this issue. In December, the British competition agency then informally passed the case to European Commission. Now, the European Commision is investigating Apple Computer. At the moment, they are making informal requests to Apple as this investigation is only in the early stages yet.
Phil Evans from Which said the consumer association is looking forward to action being taken by the European Commission to ensure a digital music market serves all of its customers equally throughout Europe as well as functions as a single European market.
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Some British iTunes users have slammed the differential pricing as yet another example of "rip-off Britain". Apple's pricing policy was brought to the EC's attention in December 2004 by the UK's Office of Fair Trading (OFT), which was itself made aware of the situation by British consumer group Which? In the UK, the iTunes Music Store charges customers 79p (€1.14) to download a single track. The same song costs €0.99 when it's downloaded from Apple's other European music shops. Apple can, of course, charge what it likes, and while UK consumers might be annoyed at the price differential, there's little they can do but complain about it. Or go and buy songs from, say, ITMS' French outlet. However, Apple doesn't permit them to do so. Read the full article here. Some more info on c|net here. |
As iTunes does not have to worry about delivery charges or returns, they should have no problem even selling their music to other European countries. For example, CD-Wow which sells music CDs sometimes charges different prices from its international stores, however the customer can purchase from what ever store they want, unlike iTunes where users are forced to purchase from their own country's version of iTunes.
A similar story could be said about currency charges also. For example many software product retailers that sell software downloads often charge a different price for different currencies, however the majority of them allow the customer to choose what ever currency they want to pay in. Even though Apple prefers customers to stick with their own country's iTunes version, iTunes UK could easily offer UK customers to pay in Euro the €0.99 price as charged in its other European stores.
Feel free to discuss and find out more about iTunes and other music download services on our Music Downloads, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) & Legal Issues Forum.
Source: The Register
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