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Comment by discodancer | Hacker News Reader

Another question is why is apple merchandise so much more expensive in Europe? Most european countries have around 20% VAT, but the prices sometimes are even 50% higher.

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Everything is sold with the same price but a different currency sign. Just replace $ with € and you're done. Games, consoles, hardware...

Example:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/47700/?cc=US

http://store.steampowered.com/app/47700/?cc=DE

(I know this isn't true for everything, but it certainly feels that way)

fortunately € will soon be on par with $

So, order abroad and be done with it. One more reason Apple doesn't want people to order more than 2 ipads I guess, it will cut in to their future profits.

In fact I just did. Bought a high-end pen tablet on ebay from a seller in the US. Even including overseas shipping, it was half the asking price here, so I felt lucky. The only problem, the package arrived with the box tampered and the tablet itself missing. So I am now stuck with a grip pen and a bunch of driver CD's :)

Man that sucks, I hope you can somehow get your money back.

Was the delivery insured?

Thanks, I really felt depressed that day. Not as much about the money (although it put a dent in my ramen budget), as the feeling of being robbed of a new toy :)

Yes, since it was Express Mail, it was automatically insured for 100 bucks.

Ditto for Sweden. iPod touch 2K/3K/4K SEK (http://store.apple.com/se/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_...). But $1 ~ 7.2 SEK so it's about 40% more expensive. Lots of things were priced to the convenient round number: a can of coke was 10 SEK ($1.40), a sandwich would be 50 SEK ($7), so it was convenient but very expensive compared to US.

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