MSDN ​Subscriptio​ns outside the US

Hi,
Can anybody put me straight?
I'm trying to buy a MSDN Professional (or perhaps a premium subscription if I can afford it) in the UK and the numbers seem all wrong.
According to what I am seeing the cost appears to be 57% (yes that's right 57.5%)  more expensive in the UK as compared to the US.

We have a 17.5% tax on goods over here called VAT, so I can account for 17.5% of it, but there's still a 33% price difference to be accounted for.

I was hoping someone may have asked this one before.
I don't mind paying the money from Visual Studio and the operating Systems, I think they are worth it.

I know the European community and the USA impose retalitory duty rates on each other when the diplomats get into a fight about something. However in those situations I understood that duty rates of 3-5% were typical - a rate of 15% indicates that the the diplomats are on the verge of having a punch-up. Or that's what I thought.. so I'm confused?.

I mean 33% - that's massive. That's can't be coming from the duty can it?

It's hard to find an answer going through the customer support and faq route - does anyone know where to look? or even better can any one from MS give an answer?

Before you respond please bare the following in mind:
1. I'm only a developer. If anyone, any court or any company from the UK did something to upset you,it wasn't me but I sincerely apologise on bahalf of my nation and my continent.
2. I'm trying my best not to feel discriminated against. My mind is open, if you can demonstrate that my numbers are wrong, or it can be explained in terms of taxes and duties I will be genuinely happy. As I said - I like Microsoft's development tools very much.
3. If anyone agrees with me or has noticed similar price disparirties elsewhere, please post a reply, but can I ask you to keep it nice and civil - I need  answer and don't want the topic to get edited out.

Thanks for any advice you have

The only reason for the price difference I am aware of, is that customers are bying it.

This question has been asked before, passing unanswered.
(Well maybe not for MSDN, but for other products)

There are all sorts of different deals available (eg 3 year volume license which you can then cancel after a year or two years if you decide - like I did - that it's become poor value for money when there's nothing new and microsoft keep giving the stuff away for free at events).

Contact Grey Matter to see what options are available and the best deal you can get.

Or attend as many events as you can!

(eg Mix UK attendees paid £299 to attend and got retail boxed editions of all four products in Expression Studio and Vista Ultimate as well)

Personally I cancelled two years into a 3 year sub back in February because nothing new was coming out and after 10 years of always having something every month MSDN had suddenly become "There's nothing this month" several times in the last year. Most of the beta's are free these days and until VS 2008 goes RTM I can see no reason to take out a sub because there's little made available for the high cost that you can't find elsewhere (and legally!) by doing just a basic bit of research.

You might also want to look into the Action pack - much cheaper at about £200.

Thanks irascian,

Grey matter was a little cheaper.

I didn't know about the operating systems in the action pack either.
That might be an option for me.

I'm a contract developer and my clients are microsoft partners and have ample licenced copies of VS2005.

However, I have a home office and I was hoping to put together an automated build and test system in the home office. Nowadays, I am spending more time testing than coding - the clients always seem happy to pay for dvelopment tools, but when it comes to servers and also licences for testing, they think they can do without. as a result I can't do the test-driven development that I like, because I don't have access to an empty server and a couple of systems to run the automated delpoyment, unit smoke and scalability tests on. Having the ability to do that at home can allow me to do far less testing on site, and a better quality of life and far few miles travelled back and forth from client sites.

Therefore I need the ability to build commercial code  (hence the need for another VS 2005 licence) and  the need to clean & install lOS images and patches to test that my code runs(and MSDN professional gives me the licences for that.)

So its a shame, but as no-one from MS has replied, it looks like the price discrimination is just that, which is disappointing, and perhaps a little insulting.

I think I'll take your advice and get the action pack, and bin the idea of MSDN for now - I'll buy a simple Visual Studio 2008 pro licence when it comes out instead.

I was interested about what you said about the give-aways at MS events - I've never been offered an operating system or a compiler at a discount - does it happen often? - I must got to the wrong MS conferences - I just get a little bag with a t-shirt in!!!


oo- I've just worked something out - I think I can fly to across the Atlantic buy a MSDN subscription and VS2005 Pro and then bring it back to the UK, paying the duty and VAT on entry for less than the price differential!

What a crazy world we live in.

uk_coder wrote:

I was interested about what you said about the give-aways at MS events - I've never been offered an operating system or a compiler at a discount - does it happen often? - I must got to the wrong MS conferences - I just get a little bag with a t-shirt in!!!

PDC (admittedly US based and with a high entry price) attendees got free SQL Server 2005 license and Office beta.

Attendees of the free VS2005 launch events in the UK (there were several of them) AND the USA got free copies of VS2005 Professional and SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition.

Attendees of the free WebDD day in the UK got free retail copy of Expression Web.

Attendees of MIX (US and UK, low cost event) got free copies of  entire Studio suite and Vista Ultimate edition.

The giveaways at all these events were at the worst hinted at in various blogs, or at best (eg the UK VS2005 giveaway) promoted heavily here on C9.

It's not rocket science, just a question of doing basic research. If they advertised things too widely then everybody would be getting in on the act (and certain events are filling up way too fast already).

And as Blowdart says nobody will answer over a weekend (although I'd agree that Microsoft are unresponsive and your best bet is to deal with a reseller).

I'm a MSDN professional subscriber in Hong Kong.

I'm aware that the DVD discs I received monthly are shipped from Singapore by Fedex. Perhaps that could partially explain the cost difference. You know, shipment by express service IS expensive.
(For example, the standard delivery rate per 0.5kg from Singapore to HK is about USD 27.5, and they ship about 10 times a years. And the welcoming kit they ship in the first month is going to be heavier than that)

irascian wrote:


Attendees of the free VS2005 launch events in the UK (there were several of them) AND the USA got free copies of VS2005 Professional and SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition.

Same here in HK, although we have to attend all the four sessions to get the coupon to redeem that.

irascian wrote:


It's not rocket science, just a question of doing basic research. If they advertised things too widely then everybody would be getting in on the act (and certain events are filling up way too fast already).

And may I add that if you subscribed to the MCP Flash, information of those events will be automatically emailed to you. There's a section named "Events and More" telling you upcoming Microsoft events in worldwide.

irascian wrote:

Personally I cancelled two years into a 3 year sub back in February because nothing new was coming out and after 10 years of always having something every month MSDN had suddenly become "There's nothing this month" several times in the last year.

I also allowed my MSDN sub to lapse for similar reasons.

Firstly, I was peeved that after all these years, MS would not do me the courteousy of letting me know that my sub was about to expire and I only discovered after I was refused log-on to subscriber downloads.

Secondly, after cooling down, I thought about what I'd gotten from it since VS2005/SQL-Server shipped... and the answer was... not much.  VISTA ?? so what ? Betas?? I can inflict that pain on myself for free.

At this point I'm waiting until after VS2008 etc go RTM, then I'll look at what I get for my money.

Large companies have Enterprise agreements for alll there employees, nuff said .