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Different prices of Premium Membership


Tschakko

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I don't kmow why the difference is but in any case I think it is a small price to pay towards the cost of running the website etc, without which we couldn't enjoy the experience. I pay a different amount each time as is based on the current exchage rate.

Gerry. Australia.

Edited by gerryl
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I don't kmow why the difference is but in any case I think it is a small price to pay towards the cost of running the website etc, without which we couldn't enjoy the experience. I pay a different amount each time as is based on the current exchage rate.

Gerry. Australia.

 

If they did charge more to all their customers we would not discuss in here... BUT only Europeans have to pay more now. The rest of the world still pays the same... This just is not acceptable...

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Can i just ask that others raise the issue with HMRC, at the end of the day the more people communicate a potential tax fraud the more likely it is that someone will look. It should be a simple matter for the authorities to check and the online form is simple to do, then they can look at the tax records to ensure that VAT is being paid. If at the end of all this they are paying tax and they have sneaked in a small increase in prices then the matter is moot, price rises are inevitable and a price for life was never going to be easy to honour.

 

Jeremy et al have proved time and again that their customer service record is rubbish, they have always followed the treat the customers like mushrooms approach and we have let them because there are no real viable alternatives for our hobby. They know that no matter what they do we will continue to pay and continue to use their site, the most annoying thing is that after all this there will still be a long line of people waiting to shake Jeremy's hand and the hand of every lackey that arrives for the Mega event, the adulation of the person treating us in this manner means that he will continue to do so. It's like giving a chocolate treat to the dog that's having a big dump on your carpet.

 

So tell the tax man, it's very easy, tell your friends and everyone else you meet to do the same and then consider how you will act when you see the man or his minions in a few weeks time.....

 

Personally I'm finding more and more that the customer service is appalling, paying customers are treated with utter contempt and the hobby becomes less and less enjoyable because of the seemingly endless focus on twitface integrations and mobile apps that provide instant gratification while ever more caches turn out to be film pots behind signs and nanos on metal railings.

 

For me the price increase is trivial, the £2 or so extra per year is less than a pint of beer at an event. It's about 10 miles worth of fuel in my car, or probably about 200 miles worth of consumables on the bike. Being treated like a walking wallet whose duty is to shut up and pay up annoys me, and the dwindling enjoyment I actually get out of the hobby means my find rate has nosedived. What I've found so far this year is comparable to what I was finding every month a couple of years back, it's becoming routine for me to find maybe 5-10 caches in a month.

 

I'm still debating whether to renew my membership at all - I'm considering giving it another year to see what happens with a view to either deciding I like it enough to keep paying and putting up with the BS from GS, or just abandoning caching completely.

 

Of course the viable alternative to the hobby is simply not to partake in it for long enough to send a message to GS. It's just a question of whether the enjoyment people gain from the hobby is worth the price and the appalling customer service.

 

Worth swinging by HMRC and just filing a report to encourage them to check that GS is actually registered. Of course the simple act of keeping a promise would render it unnecessary, but there you go.

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Five days since the last post and this thread is winding down without a satisfactory answer from Groundspeak.

 

I certainly don't feel valued and my view is customer care stops as soon as something goes off script.

 

I don't think Groundspeak like their customers. Amongst upper management most strongly.

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There is little more that can be said. We have done the research to know more about the VAT on electronic services scheme that Groundspeak uses. We all know that Bryan promised to provide information that is willingly given by other companies under that scheme. We all that Groundspeak raised their basic rates to EU customers (excluding VAT). We all know that Groundspeak has retreated from their promises and offered their usual silence. We all know what this says about customer care, the kind of value they place on communication, and integrity.

 

But still I think that bumping this thread from time to time is good. Just as a reminder. A knock on the door. If Groundspeak no longer listens then it is at least a reminder to ourselves.

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There is little more that can be said. We have done the research to know more about the VAT on electronic services scheme that Groundspeak uses. We all know that Bryan promised to provide information that is willingly given by other companies under that scheme. We all that Groundspeak raised their basic rates to EU customers (excluding VAT). We all know that Groundspeak has retreated from their promises and offered their usual silence. We all know what this says about customer care, the kind of value they place on communication, and integrity.

 

But still I think that bumping this thread from time to time is good. Just as a reminder. A knock on the door. If Groundspeak no longer listens then it is at least a reminder to ourselves.

I fail to see why your bumping the thread since you don't have a dog in this fight.

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I fail to see why your bumping the thread since you don't have a dog in this fight.

 

Actually I was responding to the previous post commenting that the thread was winding down and it had been five days since anyone had posted.

 

I don't have a monetary interest, but an interest nevertheless. It is the reason why I started to learn about VAT pertaining to non-EU companies, read a few articles on Westlaw about jurisdiction and enforcement, and began to research what other companies have done in this situation. Call it curiosity since there were so many different opinions that were based on standard VAT practices. Call it an interest in how Groundspeak makes decisions that affect its users and in the integrity of the company. Call it an increasing sense of bewilderment because it would have been easy for Groundspeak to answer the questions that kept this thread going. Call it a dog.

Edited by geodarts
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Call it an interest in how Groundspeak makes decisions that affect its users and in the integrity of the company. Call it an increasing sense of bewilderment because it would have been easy for Groundspeak to answer the questions that kept this thread going.

 

^Mostly this.^

 

But how soon will it be before we all have a dog in this fight?

 

Full disclosure is a beautiful thing, it breeds respect.

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Call it an interest in how Groundspeak makes decisions that affect its users and in the integrity of the company. Call it an increasing sense of bewilderment because it would have been easy for Groundspeak to answer the questions that kept this thread going.

 

^Mostly this.^

 

But how soon will it be before we all have a dog in this fight?

 

Full disclosure is a beautiful thing, it breeds respect.

 

Indeed, and promising to deliver something only to renege on the promise breeds contempt.

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Bringing this back to the top, although it is being ignored by GS.

 

Undouttedly Bryan is still researching whether they can do like so many other service providers do and make their VOES registration number available. As soon as that research is complete, I am sure he will be back to tell us the results.

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Dropped down to much... up again. It's NOT going away.

 

By the way, I just renewed and it was $29.99 instead of the traditional $30 I have been paying all these years. I suppose they got that extra penny out of the Europeans. Thanks guys!

 

Oh, as far as the topic? It's deader than dead.

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Predicted way back in the first few pages...

 

Groundspeak knew there probably wouldn't be a huge uprising of discontented Europeans...and they were (apparently) correct.

 

If indeed there had been such an uprising, I have no doubt that a contingency plan was developed...just in case.

 

Nothing to see here, you should all go back to your normal Geocaching activities.

 

For those of you who felt the need to carry the protest to the maximum extent (and cancel/not renew you memberships), we salute you. :)

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Oh, as far as the topic? It's deader than dead.

 

Just wait until the state salestax has to be paid on all internet sales in the US. Maybe a "one size fits all" solution will be the start of a new similar topic. "US40 including all taxes" would be a good idea. I bet "the powers that be" are already thinking hard and long about that :ph34r:

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It had to happen...

 

As one of our premium memberships is up for renewal I set about renewing it. It seems that all the other methods documented in this thread are no longer available so I have no choice but to pay the rip-off price (or, of course, not to renew).

 

Does the site know you don't live in Delaware?

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Does the site know you don't live in Delaware?

While I was - and am - happy to employ the various workrounds while they existed, I draw the line at blatant lying :)

 

Fair enough. I guess you don't have a friend in the US to give you a gift membership either then?

 

I wonder if there's going to be a souvenir for Europeans for paying the extra. Maybe we should suggest it.

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Oh, as far as the topic? It's deader than dead.

 

Just wait until the state salestax has to be paid on all internet sales in the US. Maybe a "one size fits all" solution will be the start of a new similar topic. "US40 including all taxes" would be a good idea. I bet "the powers that be" are already thinking hard and long about that :ph34r:

 

Read the legislation. If a tax jurisdiction wants to collect taxes from an Internet sale, they need to develop and provide the software to the company that is doing the sale.

 

You Europeans did it all backwards and then expect a small company in Seattle that can't even get their color scheme right to calculate the individual tax rates for the entire EU. They took the easy way out because they were allowed to. You guys got screwed and it's over with. No one cares. It's a dead issue for all but a fraction of a percent of EU cachers.

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Oh, as far as the topic? It's deader than dead.

 

Just wait until the state salestax has to be paid on all internet sales in the US. Maybe a "one size fits all" solution will be the start of a new similar topic. "US40 including all taxes" would be a good idea. I bet "the powers that be" are already thinking hard and long about that :ph34r:

 

Read the legislation. If a tax jurisdiction wants to collect taxes from an Internet sale, they need to develop and provide the software to the company that is doing the sale.

 

You Europeans did it all backwards and then expect a small company in Seattle that can't even get their color scheme right to calculate the individual tax rates for the entire EU. They took the easy way out because they were allowed to. You guys got screwed and it's over with. No one cares. It's a dead issue for all but a fraction of a percent of EU cachers.

Actually for Washington state cachers most of us are getting screwed. Instead of collecting taxes dictated by the local jurisdiction, they collect the taxes at the Seattle rate "for our convenience". I my case the Seattle rate is about 1% higher than my local rate. Other places the difference is as much as 2%. Perhaps this will change if the internet tax passes, but I can't trust the congress critters not to leave a loop hole or two.

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I'm curious if there is somebody reading this thread who is able to evaluate how much money GS is "making" with the PMs.

 

Just to be clear: This post is NOT to blame anybody, it's just to get an idea about what we really talk about. Let's try to get facts and figures instead of "thoughts" and "emotions".

 

As an assumption I think it's not exagerated to estimate that about 33% of the cachers are PMs. Taking 25$ as a virtual amount every PM pays it should be possible to calculate the money GS earns (of course the calculation can also be done with 30$ if you want but 4x25=100 and that's easier to "compute").

 

Is there somebody, who's familiar with rented server farms and costs for traffic, who can evaluate what might be needed to cover a site hosting more than 2 millions (cache listing) entries? With this it should be possible to calculate the money to be payed for such a "ressource" on the market - assuming they are not hosting the servers themselves. The difference between the virtually calculated earned money and the virtually calculated payed money should give us an idea about the win situation based on PMs fees. I know that this can only be a virtual calculation as nobody knows the exact figures of members, the number of PMs and the money earned and payed by GS. But I'm wondering if we can get an "idea" of what we all talk about. Might it be 10.000$/a or 100.000$/a or 1.000.000$/a?

 

By the way: Is the VAT, which is collected by a company in the US, payed to the related (EU-)countries where the money comes from? Or who does get the VAT which is mentioned here all the time? Isn't it, that you can get back the VAT payed in a foreign country when going back to your country?

 

And a last question: Has anybody got an invoice from GS? Normally the different parts of the total amount should be listed in details on such an invoice, isn't it? At least it's this way in Germany if we pay in Euro. I've never seen an invoice in foreign currency to have an amount for the VAT on it. But I've not seen so many invoices of this type so far.

 

And just to repeat it: This post is NOT to blame anybody, it's just to get an idea about what we really talk about. Let's try to get facts and figures instead of "thoughts" and "emotions".

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If 1 in 3 of the 5 million cachers is PM and pays US$30 you get 1.500.000 PM (rounded off downwards) so that makes US$45 million. Not that this matters. GS gas the liberty to set prices as they please.

The problem here (you can go through all 15 pages to read it all) is that VAT is a tax, hence it's a percentage. So it should be US$30+tax and not €30 "which includes all".

US companies dealing with a certain income from the EU are required to collect VAT and transfer this amount to the VAT authority of the country they registered.

 

So far no problem BUT. GS refuses to give their VAT registration number starting rumors they are not registered. They don't issue receipts where the percentage/amount of VAT is shown. Even at the highest EU VAT $30+VAT is NOT €30 so they are collecting more than PM + tax effectively raising the price for PM just for EU cachers.

 

You can't reclaim VAT the way you wrote but a registered business in the EU can but they need a detailed invoice to do so and GS refuses to issue one thus making it impossible to reclaim the paid VAT.

 

There are "ways" to keep paying $30 for PM or just not pay at all and just become PM.

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I'm curious if there is somebody reading this thread who is able to evaluate how much money GS is "making" with the PMs.

 

Just to be clear: This post is NOT to blame anybody, it's just to get an idea about what we really talk about. Let's try to get facts and figures instead of "thoughts" and "emotions".

 

As an assumption I think it's not exagerated to estimate that about 33% of the cachers are PMs. Taking 25$ as a virtual amount every PM pays it should be possible to calculate the money GS earns (of course the calculation can also be done with 30$ if you want but 4x25=100 and that's easier to "compute").

 

It's probably a major overestimate to assume that 33% of cachers are PMs. It might be safe to say at 33% of active cachers are but there are an awful lot of accounts out there owned by people who don't cache any more for one reason or another, and a lot of accounts owned by people who only find a few caches every year and so whose names don't crop up all the time.

 

Is there somebody, who's familiar with rented server farms and costs for traffic, who can evaluate what might be needed to cover a site hosting more than 2 millions (cache listing) entries? With this it should be possible to calculate the money to be payed for such a "ressource" on the market - assuming they are not hosting the servers themselves. The difference between the virtually calculated earned money and the virtually calculated payed money should give us an idea about the win situation based on PMs fees. I know that this can only be a virtual calculation as nobody knows the exact figures of members, the number of PMs and the money earned and payed by GS. But I'm wondering if we can get an "idea" of what we all talk about. Might it be 10.000$/a or 100.000$/a or 1.000.000$/a?

 

I'm not sure that's relevant, if Groundspeak are barely scraping by or using $100 bills as firelighters because they've got so many of them it makes little difference to us as their customers. It would be more frustrating to know they were rolling in cash but still not paying proper developers to do a proper job of coding a web site but that's a business decision they get to make.

 

By the way: Is the VAT, which is collected by a company in the US, payed to the related (EU-)countries where the money comes from? Or who does get the VAT which is mentioned here all the time? Isn't it, that you can get back the VAT payed in a foreign country when going back to your country?

 

And a last question: Has anybody got an invoice from GS? Normally the different parts of the total amount should be listed in details on such an invoice, isn't it? At least it's this way in Germany if we pay in Euro. I've never seen an invoice in foreign currency to have an amount for the VAT on it. But I've not seen so many invoices of this type so far.

 

The VAT system seems like a botch introduced by the EU where they decided they didn't like the idea of Europeans getting hold of anything without a government getting a cut so introduced a mechanism that seems to invite (if not encourage) fraud. It appears that Groundspeak is not obliged to disclose their registration number and not obliged to issue VAT invoices, and as such we have no way of knowing whether they are really registered for VAT or have just added 20% to their prices claiming it's VAT and keep the extra. Bryan promised to disclose the registration details "if it were legally permissible" many posts back but this turned out to be just another empty promise. If Groundspeak were charging 20% extra claiming it was VAT it's hard to know what, if anything, European tax bodies could do about it anyway.

 

I'm not an expert on this new VAT issue but my understanding is that it is designed for businesses who sell to end users (i.e. people not allowed to reclaim VAT) and it seems whoever dreamed it up didn't consider how to handle a situation where some of the customers may be VAT-registered and end up being expected to pay VAT they can't reclaim. It may be that there's a provision for it somewhere in the endless VAT legislation but in this particular case it's hard to see very many Groundspeak customers being in a position to reclaim VAT on their premium membership. A few people writing software to process pocket queries may have a legitimate claim for it being a business expense but it's not unreasonable to assume that they are a tiny minority.

 

It seems the only way to avoid paying the extra is either tell the site you live in the US (in which case you need a US address, although a made up address may work) or not to pay at all and revert to basic membership. If you've got a friend in the US who buys you a gift membership that might also work, but I guess a lot of European cachers won't have such a friend.

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If you've got a friend in the US who buys you a gift membership that might also work, but I guess a lot of European cachers won't have such a friend.

Just give a PM gift to yourself as a birthday present, it will cost you $30... ;)

 

From what someone posted above it looks like they tried that and it didn't work, and they didn't want to say they lived in Delaware for the benefit of the site.

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Bringing this back to the top, just to show GS that we are not going to forget this even though they are trying to.

 

No they are not "TRYING" to forget this...they already have.

 

Well, thanks for telling me this.

I will not renew my membership for a few months in protest.

 

OH NO!!! GS is trembling now!! They are gonna have to wait a few months before getting you 30 Euros or 30 Pounds! They might go out of business!!

Edited by Geo Jedimeister
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OH NO!!! GS is trembling now!! They are gonna have to wait a few months before getting you 30 Euros or 30 Pounds! They might go out of business!!

 

You don't get it. It's not about the money, it's about being fair...

 

AHHH. I get it. You want fair. Everyone pays the same amount for the same service. Maybe everyone should make the same amount of money. Everyone works at what they are good at doing. Everyone gets a fair chance at FTF. Sounds kinda like Russia was at one time...

 

its%2Bnot%2Bfair.jpg

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OH NO!!! GS is trembling now!! They are gonna have to wait a few months before getting you 30 Euros or 30 Pounds! They might go out of business!!

 

You don't get it. It's not about the money, it's about being fair...

 

AHHH. I get it. You want fair. Everyone pays the same amount for the same service. Maybe everyone should make the same amount of money. Everyone works at what they are good at doing. Everyone gets a fair chance at FTF. Sounds kinda like Russia was at one time...

 

its%2Bnot%2Bfair.jpg

 

But if the grocery store started adding $10 to your bill because you were wearing glasses, I'll bet you would raise a ruckus.

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OH NO!!! GS is trembling now!! They are gonna have to wait a few months before getting you 30 Euros or 30 Pounds! They might go out of business!!

 

You don't get it. It's not about the money, it's about being fair...

 

AHHH. I get it. You want fair. Everyone pays the same amount for the same service. Maybe everyone should make the same amount of money. Everyone works at what they are good at doing. Everyone gets a fair chance at FTF. Sounds kinda like Russia was at one time...

 

I have to say that's the most bizarre misinterpretation of the complain I've seen for a while.

 

Expecting to pay the same price for the same service from the same company during the same time period isn't even remotely the same concept as expecting a brain surgeon to earn the same as a road sweeper.

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No. The most bizarre thing is that EUers keep bumping this thread thinking that GS will care and explain their reasoning for the price difference.

 

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Edited by Geo Jedimeister
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No. The most bizarre thing is that EUers keep bumping this thread thinking that GS will care and explain their reasoning for the price difference.

 

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

 

But then geocachers are by their nature optimistic. That's why we buy new Garmin kit and expect it to work rather than wait 12 months for the early adopters to identify the bugs the Garmin development engineers ignored.

 

Chris

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No. The most bizarre thing is that EUers keep bumping this thread thinking that GS will care and explain their reasoning for the price difference.

 

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

 

And look who keeps hanging out here being a **** to people who want to be treated fairly. Thanks for your valuable contributions to the community.

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So if I following this thread correctly then the complaint can be boiled down to when the tax is applied.

 

I live in Washington state. So I click on the $29.99 but when I submit my payment I get charged $32.84 ($29.99 plus Washington State sales tax).

If I lived in Germany I would click on the €29.99 button and when I submitted the payment I still only be charged €29.99 because the VAT tax is already included in the price.

 

It looks like a there is a very simple solution. Apply the VAT as an additional charge the end of the sale like what is done with the Washington State sales tax for residence of Washington State.

 

If I lived in any other State I wouldn't be charged the sales tax for that State. Maybe I should my own thread about how unfair it is that Washington State is making Groundspeak charge Washington residence sales tax but no other state is doing the same.

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So if I following this thread correctly then the complaint can be boiled down to when the tax is applied.

 

You're not following the thread correctly.

 

I live in Washington state. So I click on the $29.99 but when I submit my payment I get charged $32.84 ($29.99 plus Washington State sales tax).

If I lived in Germany I would click on the €29.99 button and when I submitted the payment I still only be charged €29.99 because the VAT tax is already included in the price.

 

Except:

 

1) Groundspeak refuses to divulge the information every other company does that would make it possible for us to check that the VAT actually is sent to the EU and doesn't just disappear into Groundspeak's koffers.

 

2) Groundspeak conveniently charges EU customers €29.99 instead of $29.99 + VAT, which works out to a 32% surcharge at current exchange rates. If they followed the rules, Groundspeak should charge $29.99 + 25% to its Danish customers, $29.99 + 21% to the Dutch, $29.99 + 19% to the Germans and so on. 32% is higher than the highest VAT rate in the EU, which is currently Hungary's 27% if Wikipedia is correct. Essentially, Groundspeak is charging us extra for the privilege of paying VAT and claims it is for our own convenience.

Edited by Yellow ants
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No. The most bizarre thing is that EUers keep bumping this thread thinking that GS will care and explain their reasoning for the price difference.

If (big IF) the numbers of PMs in Europe decreases the will care. But then it will be to late.

Edited by Keystone
Potty language removed by moderator
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1) Groundspeak refuses to divulge the information every other company does that would make it possible for us to check that the VAT actually is sent to the EU and doesn't just disappear into Groundspeak's koffers.

 

2) Groundspeak conveniently charges EU customers €29.99 instead of $29.99 + VAT, which works out to a 32% surcharge at current exchange rates. If they followed the rules, Groundspeak should charge $29.99 + 25% to its Danish customers, $29.99 + 21% to the Dutch, $29.99 + 19% to the Germans and so on. 32% is higher than the highest VAT rate in the EU, which is currently Hungary's 27% if Wikipedia is correct. Essentially, Groundspeak is charging us extra for the privilege of paying VAT and claims it is for our own convenience.

 

So the issue isn't the amount being charged more than someone in another country. The issue is that you don't know if Groundspeak has a VAT registration number. For businesses registered to collect Washington State sales tax you can look up their tax registration number by going to the Department of Revenue website and searching on the businesses name. Does the EU or member States not provide a service like this?

Edited by Glenn
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