My wife and I got married in March and after spending the most awesome honeymoon in Nevada, Arizona and Utah we are back home, working hard to pay for it all;) While we’ve said ‘thank you’ in person, we also wanted to send everyone a personalized thank you, in form of a picture greeting card.
After looking at what the big German stores had to offer, we decided that iPhoto and the greeting cards option therein was right for us. The pricing Apple offered on their website also seemed tremendously appealing. €1,75 per card, with a 40 cent discount, as we were going to order 70 of them. All was well, a greeting card for € 1,35 – that was nothing anyone we knew of could deliver.
We went into iPhoto and designed what we thought to be the nicest card, we could come up with. We are both extremely pleased with the outcome – but now came the Apple Check Out Shock. See the screenshot below:
So what you see here, is firstly that Apple states prices without VAT. In Germany this is really, really not supposed to happen. When you advertise a price, you have to include VAT. I am sure it did say somewhere on Apple’s website that the price excluded VAT, but still this is annoying. But since it is the German government that wants 19% VAT, I guess I have to accept that charge.
What really seems annoying is the fact that there is a €25.99 (plus VAT) shipping charge.
Maybe we need to convert that quickly so you all can appreciate my disgust at this charge, this is roughly US$ 41!!!
Can you imagine that, forty-one Dollars? We picked standard delivery – nothing extraordinary here! This is bloody outrageous and someone at Apple ought to think about the impression their customers get. On net prices that is a 27% shipping and handling charge.
What’s so difficult about packing 70 cards and putting them in a box and shipping them to my address in Germany?
Well I can tell you what’s so difficult about it. Despite the fact that Apple has the most awesome iPhoto software and thus some of the nicest looking cards you can think off, they have never been bothered to actually find a contractor in Europe, that would print all those photo books, greeting cards and the likes. Thus Apple ships these items from the United States and encloses an invoice from their Irish subsidiary.
All of this means that ordering from Apple will take longer than from any local supplier. But most importantly it means that Apple is losing out on business. If I didn’t do the math, I would have cancelled the purchase the very moment I saw the €25,99 shipping charge. However this is why I didn’t…
The other company that I use for greeting cards charges €1.99 a card, including VAT, but doesn’t offer a discount for ordering a larger quantity of cards. So the cost all in all is very comparable and my wife and I decided to go with what we thought were nicer looking cards.
Now I can only hope that Apple will deliver the nicest possible greeting cards to my wife and I, otherwise we’ll be really unhappy. But for the time being, all that is left is my outrage at the fact that Apple doesn’t consider the needs of their European customers.
We pay over the odds for Apple Hardware and when Apple does offer a very competitively priced service, they immediately ruin their ability to remain competitive by adding a massive s&h price.
This is what Apple should do in my humble opinion:
1) State all prices including VAT to allow a fair price comparison.
2) When offering a volume discount, reduce the discount given to absorb some of the shipping and handling cost.
This is purely psychologically, of course, but when you see a $41 s&h fee this freaks you out immediately, if you saw a $10 fee, that would still seem high, but it wouldn’t leave you with the feeling of outrage.
And in conclusion, Apple can get away with slightly higher prices, since the level of customization I get to do with iPhoto means I get a card, that I have designed inside and out. With my colors, with my borders, my fonts, my whatever. I get a perfectly customized card, not something any of the other web-services I have used is currently setup to deliver and I, as many other users, will be happy to pay a premium for that.
However Apple manages to leave a sour aftertaste with me on these issues and that is rather regretable.
Oh well, I shall let you know when the cards arrive and whether we are happy 
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