Comments on: Why Aren’t You Letting Your Customers Give You Money?

By: Emmanuel Deloget

Emmanuel Deloget — Tue, 08 May 2007 12:45:25 +0000

Not to mention that the way people see taxes differ from one country to another. In France, shops are more or less required to show the price with all taxes included – except if they target a B2B market. The reason is that we have an unified tax system across the territory, so displaying prices without taxes doesn’t make much sense.

So I’d be really angry if I realize that the price which is displayed on a web site is not the price I’ll have to pay in the end. And I guess my bank account would feel raped :)

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Tue, 08 May 2007 09:17:37 +0000

Yeah it’s ineresting. You’ve got “give the customer more information” on the one hand and “hide the information to get more sales” on the other hand. It’s true that adding the VAT on early may put some people off the sale so they wait until the last minute before adding it on (same with P&P). Plus, as Roman says, you gotta know the country first and the easiest way is to get them to fill out their address. The portals all add VAT on, which you pay, but the portals don’t get the VAT in the long run (they do for a few months) because they have to pay it to the governments of the relvent countries.

Anyway, onto payment choices. When selling my game framework I set it up with paypal and one customer suggested I use share-It as well because some people distrust paypal so I setup Share-it. Now 44% of my sales are from Share-it! Also I received a cheque in the mail for one sale – that’s fine, it’s all money.

By: Juuso - Game Producer

Juuso - Game Producer — Tue, 08 May 2007 07:46:32 +0000

@papamook: Could be… although I have bit doubts about that. I’ve started to favor play.com because they tell the price right away… and I don’t want to be bothered always go through that amazon mess… so in my case it’s not working for them.

By: papamook

papamook — Tue, 08 May 2007 06:07:17 +0000

Jusso: “Amazon must be one of the worst examples: you have to give all your customer information and even credit card details before you can see the final price.”

They do things this way because they know that this increases sales. Once a customer has given all of their details they are less likely to back out at the end of the sale.

By: Juuso - Game Producer

Juuso - Game Producer — Tue, 08 May 2007 04:36:29 +0000

@Roman: No way? Now now… that’s the wrong statement. The correct answer would have been: “Okay, how is this possible?” ;)

Here’s some options:
1) Detect country by looking at the IP – and re-calculate the price accordingly.
2) Include VAT in the price
3) Display different prices, such as $20 for US, 20 eur for european (and mention: VAT included)

By: Roman Buodzwski

Roman Buodzwski — Mon, 07 May 2007 19:53:39 +0000

There’s no way you can provide your customer full prive (incl. vat) before one enter home/shipping details – vat is based on customers country so before they enter country details they can’t see full price.

I let my customers pay vat :)

By: Juuso - Game Producer

Juuso - Game Producer — Mon, 07 May 2007 19:14:18 +0000

I suppose, don’t know who is paying it though (added to customer, or portal) – I would bet customer ends up paying it.

Best way would be to test it…

By: Blueskied Games

Blueskied Games — Mon, 07 May 2007 19:09:48 +0000

I mean, they are charging the VAT?

By: Juuso - Game Producer

Juuso - Game Producer — Mon, 07 May 2007 19:08:52 +0000

Not sure, but I would guess that portals probably don’t have any better solution.

By: Blueskied Games

Blueskied Games — Mon, 07 May 2007 19:04:35 +0000

I’ve been thinking about this VAT thing for a while.
I seem to be one of the few who does not hand it over to the customer (thus losing money).
Probably once the customer has decided to buy s/he won’t stop because of the VAT – as in your case.
How are the portals doing this?