Is This Deception or What?

Over the Christmas break an few market vendors offered substantial discounts for their commercial modules. being an Age Pensioner I decided to take advantage of a few offers, hoping to refine my proposed site with a couple of extra bells and whistles.

I live in Australia, and I've always considered the Boonex/Dolphin site to be Australian. If in doubt, look at the demo site and note references to Platypus, Kangaroo, Rainforest and all other things Australian.

In the forums, I've also heard mention of the US site, but I've never been able to find it. Maybe Boonex uses IP Address blocking and blocks Australian users from seeing the US site, or maybe it doesn't exist any more?

The thing is, all prices in the Dolphin Market are listed in Dollars -  but pray tell, what dollars? Are they Australian Dollars, New Zealand Dollars, Hong Kong Dollars or US Dollars?

Maybe someone can tell me, because I can't find the answer to that anywhere!

As an Australian, visiting an Australian web site, I naturally assumed that all prices quoted were in Australian Dollars, but it seems that isn't the case.

My reasonably cheap module immediately became 30% more expensive.

If you think I'm furious, you had better believe I am.

One vendor told me that all web sites quote in US dollars. Well they don't, and I proved it to him. Fortunately it wasn't his deception. He had nothing to do with how the price of his goods were marketed on the Boonex site. Not only that, he offered to sell me the products for (almost) Australian dollars at his expense.

I wonder how many people have been sucked into this abyss and how it's affected Dolphin sales? The market is sensitive at best and to find yourself facing an extra 30% bill (80% if you live in Hong Kong), it doesn't take long to lose interest.

The next time I visit the Boonex site, I expect to see "All Prices Quoted are in US Dollars" everywhere. It should only take an hour of your time to make my life and the life of many other people more bearable.

Demmy

 A little demanding aren't we.

But I do see your point.

Some people I guess just do not see that the payment processor they use(like paypal) says the real price they pay(with the exchange rate). Least mine always did and I always had to confirm before payment was transferred.

@truckingspace The issue came to a head just before I pressed the Paypal accept key and that's why I went back to the supplier to query the price. As much as you may think it trivial, I can assure you that there are much better ways of letting a person know they're about to get slugged an additional 30%.

The best and most polite way is for the site to advise the purchaser that prices are not in his or her currency.

Fortunately for me, the developer concerned was a gentleman and we negotiated a price I could afford to pay. What offended me was that he was already offering a substantial discount and then I discovered I couldn't pay. That was an embarrassment to me, but he continued to help me out. He could have told me to jump in the lake!

Deception might be a little strong of a word, but is a decent suggestion. Paypal will always denote the currency, so maybe that's why this has been overlooked in the past.

I only purchase during holidays. Im looking to purchase a few mods since I updated my site to 7.3 But I do understand if you think you were paying one price and was charged another. I recently had a problem at a super market and I purchased 5 small items ice cream, a soft drink, a few apples, oranges ice cream cones. My cost was $33.14 usd I didn't pay attention and paid for my items and went home. After getting home I notice the receipt and what I paid and the ice cream cones were priced on the receipt for $19.99 NOT $1.99 I also was very upset.

You just made a case for why the Euro was a bad idea for those joining the European Market; at least GB had the good sense not to use the Euro.  Anyway, vendors set the price of their modules based on their own economy; an economy with high inflation means higher market prices and it is the same for the Boonex Market.  You just witness what happens with you buy internationally.  I have never complained when having to pay more due to the exchange rate when buying internationally, it is the way economies work, except for the Euro where weak economies are pulling down strong economies and the strong economies are having to prop up the weak ones just to keep the European Common Market from crashing; which it may do eventually anyway due to the stupid idea of all using the Euro.

To answer the question you posed in the title, the answer is no.

I take your point @Geek-Gurl, but once again I must emphasise this is NOT about the vendor. They are free to charge what they consider right or what the market will bear. All Boonex needs to do is state that prices are in US Dollars, or show a price like this : US$50

They need to do this because Dolphin is essentially an Australian product being marketed in countries that have a different value to their Dollar. Using US currency is fine as long as people are told - in advance.

I know this may be difficult for people outside Australia and New Zealand to understand, but how would any of you like it if you were in a country that used dollars as the currency, went to a site and paid $100 for a product and got billed $130? Then when you queried it, you were told the company prices in US dollars because they also have international clients, but they forgot (or neglected) to tell you.

Deception is allowing you to assume or believe something when it is actually something else.