miccullen wrote:
I don't think it's malice, just sheer stupidity.
Adobe do exactly the same thing, in general. (They dropped the price on LR3 a couple of months ago from AU$400 to $136, at which point I immediately bought it, as that was in line with the special price in the US, but before then, they didn't even reply to emails asking why downloading the exact same software off the exact same servers cost three times as much in Au as in the US.) Photoshop is still a huge premium down here compared to the US.
The thing is that Nik did reply to my emails, but they flat out refused to answer any pertinent question with regards to their policy. If that's not malice, or at least a calculated intent, then why wouldn't their marketing staff intervene in these threads and explain the rationale behind their pricing? Or even better: post a bulletin on their website to actively show that they are not playing their customers like fools.
One of their (self-proclaimed) employees did post in several discussions, promising to forward these concerns to the responsible party so surely, they must be very well aware that they are losing customers and gaining a bad rap. But still, not a peep.
To me, the lack of any sort of credible explanation, combined with then incessantly dodging the issue and trying to pull the wool over their customer's eyes with "explanations" that don't hold a drop of water, demonstrates a more nefarious motivation than just incompetence or ignorance.
