Pricing in Canada

When I heard that Apple Store had been down, I checked it at 4:35 this morning. It seems that the 15" MacBook Pro had gone down in price. However, on the Apple Canada store, its still $300 more than the US Store. Very frustrating. I wrote to Steve Jobs about this. I encourage all Canadians to write to Apple about this.

Thanks

Uh, I'm not sure what you're looking at, but I live in the US and the prices are the same on my screen: $1999 and $2499.

Canada store



U.S. store



Boo hiss.

That's odd, the US $ is even less worth than the Canadian $ atm.

Maybe I misunderstood. I thought the OP'er was upset because he thought there had been a price reduction in the US store but prices didn't change in the the Canada store. The price difference is bad, but none of the prices have actually changed.

Are there any tariffs or taxes that could explain the difference? Can you buy from a US reseller and have it shipped to you in Canada? I've bought things from Canada resellers and had them shipped to the US.

fleurya said:

Are there any tariffs or taxes that could explain the difference?

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None that I know of. There's the federal added-value tax of six per cent as well as any provincial added-value tax, but neither of those are included in the Apple store's prices as they are at the U.K. store. And since the computers come from China, there should be no added shipping price from the U.S.

Can you buy from a US reseller and have it shipped to you in Canada?

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Yes, but a buyer has to be careful because shippers, such as Fedex, add huge "handling fees" for cross-border shipments. As well, there might be a problem with warranties.

The difference in prices is especially galling with the Canadian dollar hovering between $1.05 and $1.10 U.S. In addition to the extra $200 or $300 Apple receives if each dollar was merely equal in value, the company nets five to 10 cents extra on every buck, which means a lot when a tab hits a couple of grand — multiplied again with every sale.

I call this the sheep tax, as we Canadians are so docile when it comes to things like this, we don't make a fuss. However, recently, this has been an issue dealt with in Parliment, and Wal-Mart for example, lowered their prices in Canada.

I purchased a .Mac subscription on Amazon USA for 74.99 which cost $129.00 on Amazon Canada. Amazon USA would not ship to me in Canada, so I sent it to my niece in New York, who opened it and read me the number. These is no hard cost with the .Mac, its a subscription, but Amazon wanted me to pay $54 more for the pleasure of buying it on their Canadian store.

naftalim said:

I purchased a .Mac subscription on Amazon USA for 74.99 which cost $129.00 on Amazon Canada. Amazon USA would not ship to me in Canada, so I sent it to my niece in New York, who opened it and read me the number. These is no hard cost with the .Mac, its a subscription, but Amazon wanted me to pay $54 more for the pleasure of buying it on their Canadian store.

Click to expand...

Smart move!

It is pretty shameless how they are increasing prices just because they think they can get away with it.

I was told that if Apple put up a price in US dollars, the credit card company would decide on the currency exchange rate (which isn't a real big comfort either).

So since Apple puts up a Canadian price on its Canadian website, it's obvious that the company is keeping a big hefty chunk on each sale it makes in The Great White North. That price difference between the US and Canada store is how many years old?...

Plus when you think we pay over 14% tax (6,5% Federal and the rest is Provincial) on every item we buy...

Disclaimer: The taxes we pay have nothing to do with Apple.