I wonder if they can get away charging higher prices in these countries because chess is more popular there.
1. US prices don't include sales tax.
2. All prices are shown in USD, which has fallen ~12% in the last few months.
Adjust for both of these and Western Europe gets the plans for 20% cheaper.
£15 a month in the UK for an online chess game is crazy.
I've paid for 3 months but this is my last.
I'm only interested in Game review, but there are about 50 other sub-categories on their site that i don't use.
Only their top tier of membership provides game review and to be honest it's not even that good.
The game review is about the top 'computer' move, not what a human should do, and not one at my elo or to advance my elo.
It's a interesting PoC.
Finding it is a bit easy, processing the payment sometimes is geo locked by an account in that region (google/android) or having a form of payment in that country. Japan usually is paypay or a credit card with the BIN issued in Japan. There are many local payment providers though that do allow a foreign credit card so in the an China example:
Download WeChat/alipay, add foreign credit card, Change region, ????, profit.
It does get easier and very inexpensive if you do have foreign residencies and you can really rework purchasing.
Spotify for example is not sticky, but they are aggressive on if they aren’t sure you’re region specific to lock you into a monthly plan before allowing you to switch to yearly.
~ There was also great arbitrage for a while on providers that allowed switching to turkey residency and allowing foreign credit card billing but this ended due to the currency instability and now most software sellers anchor it to another region. ~ Also you’d be surprised about the minimum requirements to open up financial accounts in foreign countries. Linepay is pretty much open, but kinda sucks (Japan, Taiwan and Thailand) and it seems the LINE developers are maximizing at destroying their app and audience while WeChat and Alipay are amazing for what they are in general.
(I think I'm kidding. Am I?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
Or in any basic market where you have to haggle for everyday goods such as food markets in poorer countries.
This is how the article starts, and it might be somewhat off-topic, but I disagree. Plenty of businesses (at least privately held ones) have the goal of simply making enough for the owners to get by. Not to optimize for the absolute maximum. And why should they be responsible to do so?
Not only that, but people actually think they know that.
Since people believe it, it's "real to them".
IMO, this helps make it easier to go from "we're going to make the best widgets and be good, responsible, ethical corps" to "we will extract as much value as possible from customers, anything within the law is fair game, external consequences not being our concern".
[0] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-co...
They effectively put out a statement saying "the earth is flat, water is dry and sunlight is wet".
One can easily argue that by having flat pricing they're doing their fiduciary responsibility because it's setting the company up to succeed in the long run through strong consumer trust.
One can argue that by having regional pricing they're doing their fiduciary responsibility because it's setting the company up to succeed by having success in more markets.
The takeaway from Dodge vs Ford [1] is that not fiduciary duty means dollars at any cost. It's that you need to have a reason that is good for the shareholders. If you don't bother to claim it's good for the shareholders then you're not doing your fiduciary duty.
It has a responsibility to not actively and intentionally destroy the company, and to not use the company's resources for purely personal gain in a way unrelated to the company.
That's it.
This is also why you never hear about any company getting sued for anything related to this (let alone succesfully). Because it doesn't happen, as it's not a thing and any lawyer would immediately tell you you don't have a case.
Only because if they're the sole owner, there's nobody with standing to sue. There's no special legal classification for "Privately held lifestyle business". If such businesses have minority shareholders, you still have fiduciary duty to them, and can't use it as a personal slush fund, or manage it incompetently.
Sure, Amazon made drivers piss in bottles. They also put killed (or atleast, put the final nail in the coffin) your local brick and mortar xyz store.
Is it? How so?
Just because you like an alternative better doesn't make it a scam.
Sure they are turning a profit. But when you pay, you get more features. You don't need to pay if you don't want those features or want them somewhere else.
And they use some money to sponsor events. Titled Tuesday is a staple in the worldwide chess community and most top players play there. Not really yo make money, but to stay relevant (it's great PR to play against Magnus Carlsen and last for more than 20 moves or even make a draw) or to have a constant supply of really good players which keeps you sharp. They provide streaming and top-class commentary for top events. They are also involved in tournament sponsorship.
So, please keep the hate to yourself and don't use "scam" lightly. You don't need to like them or ever use them. But once you come across an actual scam, it would be a pity if you burned that term.
This post was more about exploring regional pricing using a case study and lichess being free in every country wasn't a good fit :)
It's very frustrating when you lose a lot of games to cheaters. I cancelled my subscription and moved to Lichess — and although I still lose games, I don't feel like I'm being cheated nearly as often as on Chess.com.
It irks me when we use “SKU” for SaaS.
Does SaaS has a limited amount of stock of products?
