New subscription pricing model: fundamentally unfair treatment of Swiss users needs urgent addressing
To whom it may concern,
I have read your blog post and help article about the new local subscription pricing model you will be launching soon. I fully understand and support the idea of making subscriptions more reachable for everybody.
Still, I would like you to rethink parts of what you have announced because I think it is to some extent fundamentally unfair.
I live in Switzerland where prices are notoriously high so I understand that I will have to pay more than somebody from a country with way lower cost of living/price level. This is totally fine. But I really cannot understand why you want to lower prices for Norway and Iceland which are literally in the same situation as Switzerland when it comes to price level. Also, Denmark, Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, The Bahamas and Finland will all see lower prices even though their price level is (to some extent) comparable to the one of Switzerland and higher than the one of the United States which seems to be the point of reference.
I am quite active when it comes to gifting subscriptions. Against this background I feel somewhat cheated. If the prices for Norway and Iceland will be lowered, so should those of Switzerland. It would even make more sense to raise the prices for all the above-mentioned countries with a higher price level than the United States. But for some reason only Switzerland gets ripped off. This to me is outrageous.
Therefore, I urge you to rethink your decision concerning Switzerland and treat us Swiss Twitch users fairly by applying the same standards to us as to everybody else.
Kind regards,
double_u
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Le_1000 commented
I think the same thing, especially since out of the 5.99CHF (6.4€) that we pay, the streamer receives the same amount as a sub at 3.99€. Which means that more than €2 disappears in the calculation.
A Swiss streamer receives the amount of the subs after conversion into USD. So we don't earn the 50% amount of a sub at 5.99.
Moreover, personally if the price of subs decreased, I would certainly buy more subgifts than currently.
I hope Twitch responds favorably to us.
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SirLiznerd commented
Swiss Person here, I also already reached out to the Twitch Support because I couldn't understand why they are lowering nearly every country except for Switzerland (I'm sure they are missing also some other countries). The answer i got is the following:
"Aktuell ist für die Schweiz leider keine Preisänderung vorgesehen.
Wie in unseren FAQ beschrieben, wurden bei der Änderung unterschiedlichste Faktoren z.B. die Lebenshaltungskosten miteinbezogen." -
double_u_ch commented
Sorry for not replying, TheQorkyOne. I somehow did not get a notification for your comment.
A tier 1 subscription in Switzerland is 5.99 CHF which is round about 6.65 USD. So, it is kind of the same as for Norway. But mind you, we have a very low VAT of 7.7%.
@Twitch: Does anybody read this? Is there any answer to our – in my opinion well-funded – concerns?
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TheQorkyOne commented
I assume the price in norway will drop from 54,99 NOK (which translates to 6,56USD in today's currency) to maybe 49,99 NOK (which is basically 6USD in today's currency). It might drop down to 45 NOK but I doubt it'll go any lower than that. I do agree with you: The prices in the countries you mentioned should stay fairly close to the US prices. How many Franc or Euro's does it cost for a sub in Switzerland?
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double_u_ch commented
Thank you very much for you support, Marcelgms. I totally agree with you that Twitch should of course make it fair for all the countries in the same situation, including Israel and any other country that may be affected.
The economic situation changes a bit every year and against this I understand that Twitch cannot be asked to redo pricing every 12 months. Maybe it would be an idea to assign the countries to five tiers and have all the countries in the same tier have the same pricing. So, countries with high cost of living/price level like Switzerland, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand, Norway, The Bahamas, The United States and others would be in tier 1 paying 5 USD or and equivalent thereof. From there it would step down to tier 2 paying 80 %, tier 3 paying 60 % and so on till tier 5 paying 20 %. This system would still be a bit arbitrary but way fairer in the end and much easier to understand for the customers. It is also easy to maintain.
So please Twitch, try to solve this for all of us (especially but not limited to Switzerland and Israel) and make pricing fair.
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Marcelgms commented
I agree with you, since I live in Israel and also have the same economic situation as many countries in the list, and still the pricing isnt going to change for us.
So together with you, i kindly ask to rethink the dicision about Israel and apply the same standarts as every other country in the same situation as Israel.