Odd pricing fluctuations hit Microsoft site

A RESELLER tasked with buying a copy of Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition with MSDN Premium Subscription have become perturbed by prices which don't seem to compute even given currency variations.

He told the INQ: " Being as we are in Canada I go to the convenient pull down menu, and select "Canadian Dollar". So now we see it has an MSRP of $3,514 ! Apparently Microsoft thinks that the exchange rate between US and CAD dollars is 1.406, a 40.6% exchange premium. Of course it is more like 10%, or less lately."

He said he figured that this was just a document that hadn't been updated. But, he said: "Sadly it does not stop there. If I go to order this from a Canadian distributor and as we're entitled to wholesale "reseller" pricing, now it "only" costs $2887 CAD$, equivalent to $2,625 USD. So, the wholesale price is higher than US retail."

We did a little bit of comparison on other currencies using the www.xe.com currency translator.

Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition with MSDN Premium Subscription

	Microsoft Price	XE conversion
USA	$2,499	$2,499
Canada	CA$3,514	CA$2,765
Sweden	KR 24,473	KR 18,320.91
UK	£1,677	£1,346.43

The reseller said: "So, why not buy in the USA from one of my USA distributors? The answer is: It will be unsupported if registered to a customer with a Canadian address, meaning no updates, no Software Assurance, etc." µ