Beno...! Mackie..! Jules...! Whats the word?

[christianmusicmaker]

There is a price difference between products sold in the US and the EU for Cakewalk products at the moment. I really hope Mackie will not go in that direction!

This is what Cakewalk had to say about the pricing issue (I know this is the Tracktion forum I just want to make sure Mackie have no plans to charge EU customers more because of their geographical location). Like Cakewalk...

Thank you for taking the time to contact Cakewalk. The EU (European Union) prevents US companies from selling software to EU customers unless VAT (Value Added Tax) is collected.

To collect VAT the company must have an office within the EU and, being a relatively small
business, Cakewalk does not.

Therefore, we are bound by EU law not to sell to EU customers directly. However, Cakewalk and our distributors such as Edirol are currently working together to resolve these issues.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may be causing you.
Thanks again.

Best Regards,

Bill Jackson
Cakewalk Music Software
Customer Service
888-CAKEWALK

Mackie are American so how do you get around this problem or will Tracktion 2 have one price for UK customers and another for US customers?

Does Mackie have an office in the EU? Surely Mackie are not breaking the law by selling direct to UK customers.

I just want to be sure that Mackie have no plans to go the Cakewalk route. Not Tracktion as well!

My guess is Mackie will not do what Cakewalk have done with two separate price structures but I am not aware of Mackie having an office in the UK or EU or do they?

[Lunch Money]

Only speculation here, but I'd imagine a company like Mackie DOES have an office in the EU.

Greg

[dto]

Does this count?

http://www.mackie.com/products/home/loc ... rs.html#UK

[christianmusicmaker]

Does this count?

http://www.mackie.com/products/home/loc ... rs.html#UK

It might... I hope Mackie / Beno or Jules can clear this up

[Rack Bitz]

personally i think this post is really pointless

please dont misunderstand im not disrespecting you but
the actual amount of vat isnt enough toput more than $16 dollars if it were added to tracktions price now
im sorry but if your worried about $16 oh and thats not even £10 GBP then miss the pub one night or dont have that takeaway you fancied one night
im sorry but were not talking about hundreds of pounds here
i think theres a lot of "oh mackie are gonna mess this up" worrying going on
non of us can see into the future so lets give mackie a chance and see what they do
you dont even know the price of T2 and your already worried about wether vat is going to be added

oh and besides it isnt a question for mackie or jules
its actually a question for your politician
this isnt a company policy its the law of the land

sorry to jump into your thread but i thought i should state a few facts

perhaps change the thread title to
my countries tax laws anoy me
its not mackie or jules fault that we live in europe
so lets just wait and see

[AD80]

Yeah I agree with RackBitz here. Besides, T2 wont be done for another 3 years according to Ixox . That gives people plenty of time to save the extra 16 bux.

[headquest]

When I bought Tracktion it was from Mackie's website and I paid in dollars... The price was the same wherever you bought it so far as I can tell. Does the VAT rule not apply to downloads, or am I totally missing your point ?

Are you guys assuming that Mackie will box up Tracktion and deviate from the current (all online) distribution method?

Also, the massive price difference between Sonar 3 in the US and UK cannot simply be put down to VAT - as I understand it it costs about 3 times as much over here in the UK! This sounds like a really lame excuse from Cakewalk imho...

[AD80]

I dont get it cant people buy Sonar from a distributor in the US and have it shipped to the UK without paying VAT? I dont understand how that works.

As far as the boxed/download thing is concerned, there was a lot of discussions about that back in the days before Mackie. Jules always sayd if Tracktion ever became a boxed product there would still be a downloadable version. Hopefully that will still be the case. I would be PISSED if Tracktion updates were boxed only.

[Rack Bitz]

i think mackie are gonna want to maximise there distribution efforts
so i would fully expect a cd release of tracktion
but i dont think that it will just be the download
im pretty sure well see extra plugins and other stuff on the cd
this would be the usual business model for any distributor
so perhaps these people who think tracktion cant move up into the $200 price range are wrong
once tracktion ships with a lot more goodies i believe it will quite literally be the only reasonable host available
imagine tracktion with lots of third party goodies for around $200
this would be pretty awesome
but like i said before it doesnt really matter how much we debate this only time will tell

oh and by the way the price of tracktion isnt a valid selling point for a large portion of users me included
i want to use something that works like tracktion and i will pay for it
anyone who goes back a few years will tell the same story because most of em have already paid a huge price for packages there probably not even using anymore
and the thing is people havent crossed over to tracktion because it was cheap(even though it is)
they crossed over because it gave them a new creative way of working
the bells and whistles posse arent here yet but as soon as T2 hits the markets i would expect there to be a completly different vibe to this forum
mainly because with a bigger release and a bigger market share there will be less and less focus on how easy tracktion is to use and more of a focus on the new big feature
hopefully the new users (and theres going to be an absolute shitload mackie dont do fuckall by halves)
will get into tracktions ability to not need these multitude of features
but with mass market penetration comes the individual needs of those masses

personally i think jules and mackie are upto the task
so i really dont give a flying frig
but i will add i think there are going to be a lot of unsatisfied v1 users out there because a single feature they were expecting didnt get implemented in v2
oh and im not talking about bug fixes
v2 needs to be a mass market product
and no one knows the mass market better than mackie

in conclusion id just like to point to UAD
they were ditributed by mackie no probs
the company employs nearly double the staff since it became distributed by mackie
now they are not distributed by mackie but are a much bigger ands stronger company from there time with mackie
so lets just wait and see
i think all looks well

cheers

[christianmusicmaker]

personally i think this post is really pointless

please dont misunderstand im not disrespecting you but
the actual amount of vat isnt enough toput more than $16 dollars if it were added to tracktions price now
im sorry but if your worried about $16 oh and thats not even £10 GBP then miss the pub one night or dont have that takeaway you fancied one night
im sorry but were not talking about hundreds of pounds here
i think theres a lot of "oh mackie are gonna mess this up" worrying going on
non of us can see into the future so lets give mackie a chance and see what they do
you dont even know the price of T2 and your already worried about wether vat is going to be added

oh and besides it isnt a question for mackie or jules
its actually a question for your politician
this isnt a company policy its the law of the land

sorry to jump into your thread but i thought i should state a few facts

Hi Rack Bitz...no hard feelings I know your style well enough now!

I just want to make sure that there will not be a huge price difference between the Mackie US website price for T2 and possible local distributors who if Cakewalk are anything to go by will add a lot more on top of the $16 you mentioned.

I will surely get T2 anyway but I would also like to be sure that Makcie will not do things the way Cakewalk have.

Yeah I agree with RackBitz here. Besides, T2 wont be done for another 3 years according to Ixox . That gives people plenty of time to save the extra 16 bux

AD80..eh? Who else would say something like that 3 years...! Jules must have lost all his work! I told him to back up his work ages ago! If I've told you once Julian Storer I've told you a thousand times! Developers Eh?

When I bought Tracktion it was from Mackie's website and I paid in dollars... The price was the same wherever you bought it so far as I can tell. Does the VAT rule not apply to downloads, or am I totally missing your point ?

Are you guys assuming that Mackie will box up Tracktion and deviate from the current (all online) distribution method?

Also, the massive price difference between Sonar 3 in the US and UK cannot simply be put down to VAT - as I understand it it costs about 3 times as much over here in the UK! This sounds like a really lame excuse from Cakewalk imho...

Hi Headquest I think I was able to pay in dollars as well, this is my concern that for UK buyers it will stop and local prices will be much higher for EU customers like me.

I dont get it cant people buy Sonar from a distributor in the US and have it shipped to the UK without paying VAT? I dont understand how that works.

As far as the boxed/download thing is concerned, there was a lot of discussions about that back in the days before Mackie. Jules always sayd if Tracktion ever became a boxed product there would still be a downloadable version. Hopefully that will still be the case.

Hi AD80...I hope that is the case as well I certainly beleive Jules will keep his word but the Mackie pricing issue may be out of his hands.

I know Mackie will not give pricing details they have made that absolutely clear from day one that is NOT the purpose of this thread...I am simply trying to find out if

a.EU / UK users will still be able to buy Tracktion in dollars regardless of our geagraphical locations.

b.Wether boxed version or download..if Mackie will hand over pricing decisions to a local distibutor. Instead of leaving things they way they are now.

That is all...

[Rack Bitz]

have you actually looked at the difference in price in mackies products world wide
i havent so this may be a good thing to do
it should give you some reference

cheers

[christianmusicmaker]

have you actually looked at the difference in price in mackies products world wide
i havent so this may be a good thing to do
it should give you some reference

cheers

Hi Rack Bitz...good suggestion and worth a look

[AD80]

Ok the Mackie Universal control is $1081.41 In California including tax.

And the Mackie HR824 Monitors are $627.84 In Cali including tax.

How much are they in London?

[chico.co.uk]

I dont get it cant people buy Sonar from a distributor in the US and have it shipped to the UK without paying VAT? I dont understand how that works.

I know a wee bit about how that works because I bought an engagement ring for my better half from Canada (she saw it when we were out on holiday) and had it shipped to the uk. You end up paying quite a lot more than you'd think ...

You pay the original price, and the Canadian (or US) tax, although you can claim the tax back. When it arrives in britain you then pay vat on the original price + US tax price + the cost of shipping it to the uk (at 17.5%, so you pay VAT on the shipping too) and after that you also pay import duty. Import duty is an arcane calculation which is another percentage that varies depending on the kind of good it is. So jewelry which had a stone in it is a different percentage to jewelry which doesn't, and a different percentage again to what you'd pay if you just bought the stone on it's own etc

There's a million categories for just about everything you can think of, and import duty ranges from 0% (which isn't very common) to 70% of the original price ... eeek

So distribution must be a bit of a nightmare. But i'd expect that if this was an issue, it would already affect people downloading Tracktion today. I can't see how anything's going to change because the version number goes up a full number, rather than a point release


Don't tell Mackie, but i'm in the "i'll buy it no matter what price it is" camp. Had to use cubase on a friend's laptop the other day, and both of us were scratching our heads trying to figure out how to do a send effect properly. Arghhhh

chico

[christianmusicmaker]

Ok the Mackie Universal control is $1081.41 In California including tax.

And the Mackie HR824 Monitors are $627.84 In Cali including tax.

How much are they in London?

As requested AD80...

Mackie Universal is £969.38 inc VAT
here http://www.boomerangsounds.co.uk/produc ... 54&xSec=99

HR824's are £1173.83 inc

Here..http://www.boomerangsounds.co.uk/produc ... 71&xSec=42

I know a wee bit about how that works because I bought an engagement ring for my better half from Canada (she saw it when we were out on holiday) and had it shipped to the uk. You end up paying quite a lot more than you'd think ...

You pay the original price, and the Canadian (or US) tax, although you can claim the tax back. When it arrives in britain you then pay vat on the original price + US tax price + the cost of shipping it to the uk (at 17.5%, so you pay VAT on the shipping too) and after that you also pay import duty. Import duty is an arcane calculation which is another percentage that varies depending on the kind of good it is. So jewelry which had a stone in it is a different percentage to jewelry which doesn't, and a different percentage again to what you'd pay if you just bought the stone on it's own etc

There's a million categories for just about everything you can think of, and import duty ranges from 0% (which isn't very common) to 70% of the original price ... eeek

So distribution must be a bit of a nightmare. But i'd expect that if this was an issue, it would already affect people downloading Tracktion today. I can't see how anything's going to change because the version number goes up a full number, rather than a point release

Thanks for the details Chico