USABox.com?

Say for instance if I were to setup a basic plan, could I use the address to buy software using the address I'm given from USABox?

Basically I want to avoid those scam companies (Like Adobe) who think its fare that people in the UK should pay double for software than a guy buying in the US would.

Take for instance photoshop. It costs above $400. People buying in the US pay the $400. But because I live in the UK I cant buy photoshop for $400 but instead have to pay over £400 quids for it. Adobe would basically be making over $800 from me.

WHY?

I'm sick of these companies.

Let me know how this goes. Why don't you ring adobe UK and see if you can haggle down the price to something your willing to pay.

That's a ripoff. What does it matter if you're in the UK? They still get their 400 bucks.

Corel Do it also.

Paint Shop Pro XI is around $60. Instead of being charged $60 if I were to buy it from here in the UK I have top pay £60.

If I can register and rent a US Postal Address then i can start circumventing these ripoff companies policies of mugging people in the UK.

edit [ The US Upgrade to Paint Shop pro XI is $60 and the same upgrade for UK peeps is £60.

Because they don't have a license to sell it in the UK.

I'd be very careful. By pretending to be a US citizen, you would potentially be committing fraud. It's not just about tricking the website or tricking the man/woman on the phone, you could be opening the company up to claims from Abobe's partners for selling to you without a license ( and you can guess who they would sue if they were sued, can't you? ) At the very best you'd probably end up paying $400 for a license they might ( perfectly legally ) revoke at any time. That's just the first two things off the top of my head. It could even be worse.

I think BoomBoom's suggestion is probably the safer bet.

I already made a complaint to Adobe about this and I was basically told "tough".



I figured as much tbh. I just wanted it confirmed.

Basically my thinking was to rent a US Postal Address where i could get products delivered to and then have them shipped here to the UK. This is the service that USABox offer. I figured if I can legally rent a US Postal Address then it wouldn't be illegal for me to use that address to buy downloadbale software and avoid the price ripoff.

I don't get it. Do they want $400 bucks for their software, or not? What does it matter where you live?

Email them and tell them why you're going to buy a competitors product instead.

Adobe and Corel are the only 2 companies I've encountered which do this.

Every other company I buy from (Caligari, Maxon etc) don't have this policy.

[edit] Even M$ don't have this policy.

Here's a ( better? ) thought. Are Adobe licenses transferable? If so, you could ask a US-based friend to purchase it for you, and legally transfer the license to you with no risk of committing fraud.

I bought PSP9 from Corel's US site and gave them a US address.

It was 50% of the price of the same product on the UK site. If it was something tangible then I'd accept a price difference, but it was a download!

Stuff fraud. They're price-fixing!

Yeah Thats another way. I shouldn't need to do it though. Software should have one price no matter where it is sold. If it's SOld in the US for $100 then it should cost the equivalent amount after the exchange rate in all other countries it is sold.

I bet the Corel and Adobe bosses are laughing their heads of with this legal scam they're running.

Quite a lot of the time you can 'get around the problem' by specifying your address on the address lines they have available and add UK on the end. I have got loads of free stuff from Microsoft this way that was technically only available in the US but because I put my full address and whacked UK on the end it arrived to me in the UK :)

Apple are just as bad. I once went into a UK Apple store and brought up the US Apple website on one of the display models. I then called one of the sales guys over and asked him to explain why I had to pay nearly 40% more than the listed US price when VAT is only 17.5%. The guy squirmed for a little bit then basically admitted that Apple UK was a rip-off.

I've also heard that the iTunes store charges you based on your billing addres. So it doesn't matter where in the world you are at the time you still get charged the higher UK price.

Possibly, but there's another major constraint: Very few companies will ship anything if your creditcard's billing address doesn't match up with the shipping address, thanks to people ordering crap witha stolen creditcards.

You'll also find that very few companies are willing to ship to a P.O. box (which it looks like this is, essentially)

Last but not least: when you order, you'll have to give a creditcard number. The retailer can see which bank this was issued through, and almost noone is willing to ship to a certain country when they get paid by a card that's issued to someone in another country... Meaning that you're probably going to be out of luck with a UK creditcard.

Too many scammers around, ruining it for everyone else. :-?

However: You might be able to order this directly from a US retailer such as amazon.com, and have it shipped to your UK address paid for by your UK creditcard.

But be aware that any foreign shipment is due to import duties (which are normally equal to V.A.T) Not sure what the cut-off in the UK is, but in The Netherlands it used to be anything over ~30 euro came with an invoice from customs, to be paid before they'd hand over your package.

I had the same problem buying in the Netherlands. But they occasionaly check business that are running for XX years. I would not pretend to be a US citizen. After all you'r then cheating the system, and they licence the wrong person. There probebly have good reasons for it. Eitherway its their responsibility if they cheat us by asking more :\. I just bought it at the extended rate. However, because i had a VAT ID i could still get 19% off.
I end up paying only €999,-

With corel, they actualy have a totaly differend product line in Europe. (at that time, i dunno how they've done this right now) The european version had not the features the US version had (it had less) and it sucked because it was all translated in dutch. Even tough im dutch, i work with english software, and i program in english too. Anyway, since that did not had nothing todo with "licences" but with "versions/editions" i just bought the US edition with the help of a friend of me. There was a discount on their website too so i managed to get it for like $60 legal... lol!!
Adobe on the other hand, have really "closed" all routes, so these tricks don't work on them. Its lame how they dominate the web, but there isn't much you can do about it. They're very good at it.

(i bought PSP9 Pro US, just after they bought Jasc Software, my guess is they had not time to "close" all the holes in time then.. i just read they now sort of work like Adobe.. that sux!)