Did the HB Monthly price increase for you?
I try on many country via proxies, EU countries seams to be the worst about the VAT, but others countrys also have VAT added (I try Hong Kong: +1.30USD).
About the Humble Store, VAT is not added (yet?) to the total amount, but VAT is substracted from the humble rewards:
I try with an IP from hong kong on a 20$ game:
- $1 for charity (5$) (no VAT)
- another $1 for charity OR $0.86 for humble reward (TVA substracted from $1)
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I don't see this tax in Brazil. Some other user said there's no sales tax on Argentina. They probably skipped South America.
In a few days, after my credit card bill come, I'll tell you if they eventually charged this sales taxes.
If so, I'm definitively out for good... not to mention the refund of the last one.
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- they say it's a bug
- if they charge it they don't get to keep it, since it's... a tax
- it's common to charge it (BundleStars, Steam in a different way)
What exactly is the outrage about?
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It's not exactly promising when my automated transaction gets 27% more without me knowing about it. The "outrage" happened because people got billed extra 15-27% without any notification
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Fair enough, the lack of communication was wrong. They say it was a bug, it may be a lie of course.
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I can't properly comment on that because I haven't had a chance to actually see things with my own eyes. Are you saying you have a monthly subscription and a few days ago you simply got billed for $12 + VAT, without a word? If that was the case, it certainly is not ok and probably not legal, like you said.
About the US, I think they don't display VAT in online prices because they don't have to pay it, unless the buyer and the seller are in the same state. Let me check if it's true... Ok, there's a sales tax and VAT, it seems what I wrote actually applies to sales tax and VAT is usually avoided. In any case, it's lower and way more complicated than in the EU, so it kinda makes sense to display prices before taxes.
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No, of course it doesn't have to happen to you, but like I said I am not sure I know what exactly happened, so I was asking if you could confirm it. This said, it's possible that "it's a bug" in that they're working on a VAT management system but they didn't intend to make it live without a word.
Finally, VAT is designed to be paid by the consumer, and no one pays it for you. You buy a game on Steam, you pay VAT (this is in part the reason why EU prices are usually higher than US ones), if you buy a pair of pants on Amazon (in Europe) you pay VAT, if you buy anythign in a brick and mortar shop, you pay VAT.
I guess either Humble dodged VAT payments until now and IGN decided to clean things up, or Humble had enough of paying VAT themselves and and decided to add it to their base prices. But again, the consumer paying VAT is the norm, not the exception.
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Well, it's about several things. One is the lack of communication, which is definitely not cool. Another one is who (if anyone at all) paid VAT on Humble purchases until now and how sustainable that model is.
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If I am getting right both what they mean with that sentence and what you mean by posting it, I understand that until now they paid VAT for us, unlike the vast majority of retailers. One can still guess they now had enough of that and are working on a different solution.
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The tax was already included before. Now they charge you extra.
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How was it included? In Europe we paid $12 like everyone else. They paid the tax for us, so to say.
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They couldn't have sold products in all of Europe without paying a sales tax before. What they are doing now is increasing their prices and calling it a sales tax. That tax was already in the price.
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Well, no. I'd say until now they absorbed the sales tax, while now they're making the buyer pay it (or tried to, at least). The latter is more common than the former.
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Glad I read this just before buy this monthly. Seems my money will go to Group Buys/bundle splitting.
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You can't doge taxes if you are not giving everything to charity. And since they are not (they split with HB, charities and the makers of games) they can't avoid taxes.
And for the monthly only 5% goes to charity so other 95% should be taxable
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I mean, I would've liked to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this is coming right after that Basic vs. Premium test they did. And a little too soon, too... T^T
(And come on, what kind of bug just adds on a Sales Tax?)
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if i was guessing, one that was rolled out a month or two too early, I'd be thinking that we'll be getting an email very soon about this new tax.
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I missed the Basic vs Premium test can you tell me what is it?
I guess they are calculating the Sales Tax in the back (after you pay 12$ so they know how much they have to give for tax, so it is automatic for every person based on their country) and they just flipped it to front "bug"/"accident" or maybe test we will see..
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(And come on, what kind of bug just adds on a Sales Tax?)
One that confuses region assignment of Sales Tax? It's honestly a pretty straightforward premise for a bug. The fact that it only affected certain regions rather firms up the likelihood of it being such. Moreover, all the screenshots I've seen have Euro symbols replaced by Dollar symbols (see OP's attached image as an example), which not only fully supports a region misassociation bug, but would actually have been a 0,40E discount (assuming there wasn't a second bug that misprocessed the payment after that point).
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Oh, thank you! That's the first explanation I've gotten that's made sense.
Every other explanation I've heard still isn't really a 'bug.' But this would definitely explain it.
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lol so the "bug" is not that they are trying to screw us of 20% or more of added price, it's that they added it too early? Well, looks like it's my last month anyway.
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Or buy 1 year plan now so you don't pay taxes for a year
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Maybe I should but I suspect that's what they are hoping and the "oops, sorry it's just a bug thing" is a shot across the bow to make us all dive on the yearly plan. I'm worried the quality of the bundles might not be up to much, since they've been teasing the possibility of changing the prices so now they're trying to make people buy the year plan. I guess the future will say.
Not saying this month is not worth it even with the 20% hike because the three early unlocks are worth more than the total anyway but I guess I prefer checking if it's still the case month to month. The reveals are never where the meat is anyway.
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To be honest for me the past few monthlies were pretty good. So I hope they don't change the price(even tho this "bug" didn't hit me, but on Fanatical I am priced with tax added/EU price and a while back it was $ price) and they keep with the quality XD
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I have been very happy with the early unlocks but the reveals, meh. February has some I was interested in. March was the first month I wasn't into any of the later games but the unlocks were well worth the price.
So yeah I think I'll just check the earlies against whatever price we are in for next and see if it's worth it because I don't count on the reveals for added value. More like a bonus if I like a couple of games.
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keep in mind that it could as well be PR stunt, community in general was not happy about IGN's acquisition of Humble, if right after the purchase quality would drop it would only add up to this negativity, by making 'actually pretty good monthlies' they countered critique that quality will drop or prices will rise. But at the other hand survey they were recently sending may indicate that they may be planning profit optimization, thus quality/value ratio may drop now that they fought initial negative feedback from community.
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Thank you very much for keeping us up to date with this topic.
Even if it was just a bug now, I assume this sales tax will actually be implemented at some point in the future. I wonder if it's another trick to increase their annual subscriptions (while we are still able to purchase an annual plan at the current price)...
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You're very welcome.
Nope, the bug theory doesn't hold. The implementation was already done and targeted towards VAT countries. They also updated parts of the site to reflect the added sales tax after the whole thing was reported to them only to later mark it as a "bug" when they noticed the increased subscription cancellations. That's not the behavior of a bug, that's plain A/B testing.
In my opinion, they were just testing waters as part of their price increasing solutions and reverted the change as a consequence of the resulting backlash. I think they were probably expecting people to stand still and take it without any serious consequences. From time to time it's a good thing for companies to be reminded they shouldn't abuse their customers' trust and this was a perfect example of that.
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So sad, this has been a thing for some time now - companies which are located in places like Hong Kong or Virgin Islands implementing "European Sales Tax" :))
I wonder how many of those taxes really end up in Europe ;)
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Ah the old - no honest it was a bug/glitch and will be fixed asap - right !!! - this roughly translates in the real world to:
"ohh crap you noticed and complained and pointed out the relevant EU laws to us - shhh say it was a bug and they might resubscribe !!!"
LOL - this just tends to confirm what people have been saying - IGN are looking to make changes to humble monthly and possibly even humble itself :(
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Do you honestly believe they thought nobody would notice? I highly doubt that. I guess it's most likely one of two things. Either region-specific code was accidentally used for other regions. For instance code that would add region specific tax from a US state was put in other versions. Or they accidentally enabled something that was not ready for release yet. Those seem at least possible. I really don't believe they deliberately tried to charge us more and thought nobody will notice. That's borderline conspiracy theory, but probably not what happened. ;)
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+1
Seems a glitch more than anything else, since some people were already paying tax on the monthly prior to this happening.
Also, there's nothing to say IGN has a hand in any of this - they've become a convenient scapegoat for anything Humble does. Humble made mistakes before IGN as well.
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Also, there's nothing to say IGN has a hand in any of this - they've become a convenient scapegoat for anything Humble does. Humble made mistakes before IGN as well.
This is so true.
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don't believe I ever said that humble didn't make mistakes before IGN took over in my post - so not sure of the relevance to that - but I remain as a non appologist on this one; slip of th eold bug explanation is often used by companies :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ypUz1WYens
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this just tends to confirm what people have been saying - IGN are looking to make changes to humble monthly and possibly even humble itself :(
There's the relevance, and there's no proof IGN has anything to do with any of it.
slip of th eold bug explanation is often used by companies
I know this, and there are times when it's honestly a bug as well.
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sorry but previously the text stated that humble bundle made mistakes before IGN got involved and that was what I was replying to - sorry if that got lost in the edits :) - and thus no to me it was not relevant as at no point did I state that humble bundle did not make mistakes before IGN took over - only that IGN are making alterations !!! Which I believe they are planning to?
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What I am saying is this - there's nothing to say that this isn't all Humble's doing.
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now that I will not argue with :) - I only used IGN term as that is who runs humble and so controls humble - what annoyed me more about this whole thing was not the 'bug' so much - but the fact that if this was a bug, then the company has no grasp of EU law, as prices in the EU have to be shown with tax prior to checkout :P (let alone allowed out into the wilderness)' so that bug should never have existed - but that is just in my opinion
Also, if 'some people', as killing arts notes, had not over-reacted would they have been billed the new amount - and now be going through refunds - surely an overreaction on such a small scale as SG only helps identify the issue to humble early on, and more importantly before billing :)
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hey now !!!! - nothing wrong with a good conspiracy theory - and yep I would put nothing past any company, as they are all based on gathering money as much as possible - my main point here was that this explanation is often used by companies as an excuse, be it true or not its' use is contrived at best without detailed explanation from the company using it (which we have yet to receive)
Now, if you don't mind, I am off to sit in the corner with my tin hat on and thunb through my monthly copy of UFO identification digest :)
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and yep I would put nothing past any company, as they are all based on gathering money as much as possible
indeed, they are. they also are smart enough to earn money, which usually means they are way too smart to make moves that are doomed to fail anyway, like some people in here believe HB just did.
my main point here was that this explanation is often used by companies as an excuse, be it true or not its' use is contrived at best without detailed explanation from the company using it (which we have yet to receive)
true. companies often use this an as excuse in order to avoid having to give detailed explanations. that doesn't mean we should jump to conclusions, though (like some here are clearly doing).
Now, if you don't mind, I am off to sit in the corner with my tin hat on and thunb through my monthly copy of UFO identification digest :)
Let me help ya with that! The important thing is, you need enough tin foil! :)
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ewwwwww !!!! I wouldn't be caught dead in that thing - where is your style KillingArts !!!
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it was for the image on the front only :) sleek hats are in this season - trust me when I say it was the only one I could find quickly and you really don't want to listen to the audio :P not even sure what they are going on about, as I thought it was a clip from the film but boy was I wrong :P -- see even I make stoopid mistakes - 'We're Sorrry' :P LOL
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good movie, though. actually watched it again recently. ^^
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I love it - simple format, easy to watch, and good reuse of the term 'Vamonos Children, Vamonos' which always comes in handy - though the fact that I have a 23 year old and now a 3month old (don't ask, just rest assured we are more tired than I ever thought possible), means I get to use that much less than I used to :)
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I do not believe they thought nobody would notice, I believe they thought that people may complain but end up sucking it up in the end, they probably didn't expect massive outrage especially containing arguments that they are breaking EU laws - it's seller's obligation to pay taxes from sales, not buyer's obligation, in addition VAT needs to be included in presented price, cannot be added at checkout; futhermore it was also breaking the agreement between them and their clients - you subscribed for a specific price, it cannot be changed without notification, it's their obligation to deliver you the product for the price you agreed on during subscription.
So yeah, imho it's not the case they were thinking noone will notice, they were thionking people will notice but it will end up with some complaining and soon will die off. When critique backed up with actual law citations started they must have realized it's no longer the case of customers complaining, but it could have legal consequences, thus the safest option was to back off.
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By "no one will notice" i mean "barely anyone notices and/or complains". I certainly didn't mean "not a single soul in the whole world will even notice that this is happening. ;) So what you're suggesting is exactly what I think doesn't make too much sense. They are fully aware of EU tax law. I just don't believe that they tried to rip off people and hoped that barely anyone complained about it. This just doesn't make sense from a business standpoint, as it is a plan doomed to fail and might easily create a PR desaster. I think it's way more likely that it was indeed a simple mistake. Maybe one that reveals future plans of increased prices (or maybe not). But most likely a mistake.
Btw, I realize I still owe you an answer to our other discussion. Don't give up hope, I still have the tab open. I will get to it eventually. ;)
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They are aware of tax laws but may have not been aware of the fact they are legally bound to present final price and cannot just add things like taxes, additional fees (with certain exclusions which cannot be predetermined, like for example shipping cost which varries depending on where you live, what shipping form you choose etc) at the checkout, in EU all these extra costs, especially all taxes, gotta be included in the initial offer price. And while it may be obvious for us living in European countries it wouldn't be the first time a company, even big one, is doing the very same mistake. I remember at least a few cases of big online shops (not only digital ones but selling physical products as well) not being aware of that. You would think that they would learn on mistakles of others, but situation of "+ X$ VAT tax" is coming back over and over again in different companies, so it could as well be as I am saying. I believe that if it was indeed a bug, aka reveal of future plans too early, and they were fully aware of EU laws the bug itself wouldn't look this way. It would result simply in price increase or conversion from USD to EUR (like they do in in Humble Store), here we had "+2$ Taxes" at checkout, someone had to code it exactly to add the tax at checkout, and it couldn't be just a case of it being dewsigned just for some one particular non EU region and it going for EU by mistake, because this additional fee matched p[erfectly VAT in specific European countries, so someone had to fully aware code different VAT prices determined by geolocation, had to code the addition part at checkout, for me it clearly proves that this someone was clearly not aware that these taxes must be included in initial offer.
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i will admit that it's possible that a US company is not aware of how to implement taxes in EU. unlikely (since most companies get it), but possible (since it happened several times). from that alone i would deduce that HB is probably aware of how EU taxes work.
on top of that they are not new to selling their products in the EU. i can understand if a company starts selling here and makes sort of a beginner's fault. but HB sold to EU countries for years. they paid taxes for years. they gave us prices including tax for years. i think that just makes it more likely that they know how it's done.
this and the (likely) assumption that they wouldn't risk their business by charging people more for subscriptions without informing them makes it seem very unlikely that this was intentional. it certainly makes it nonsensical to basically take it for a fact that they did it intentional, as some here do.
I believe that if it was indeed a bug, aka reveal of future plans too early, and they were fully aware of EU laws the bug itself wouldn't look this way.
a bug doesn't necessarily have to mean reveal of future plans. i don't know how their code looks, but i guess it may be possible that they did some kind of update and accidentially enabled a routine that usually only gets called for certain countries like several US states. what happened here is exactly what happens there by default, right? and if it actually is an indication of what they plan to do later on, this might simply have been unfinished, copy-pasted code. there are definitely several possibilities. i don't think we can say for sure that any possible bug wouldn't look like it did.
someone had to code it exactly to add the tax at checkout
as i said (correct me if i'm wrong), i would assume this is exactly how it works for certain US states and probably some other countries. so this is already existing code anyway.
and it couldn't be just a case of it being dewsigned just for some one particular non EU region and it going for EU by mistake, because this additional fee matched p[erfectly VAT in specific European countries, so someone had to fully aware code different VAT prices determined by geolocation
it's not unlikely that they had a database with all tax rates anyway. you don't hardcode something like that, you put it in some sort of database. or even use a third party source. so, for example, while they only used requests like "give me tax rate for virginia" for the last years, it might have been possible to get any tax rate for any country from the beginning, simply because a table for this existed the whole time. not that far-fetched, actually.
again, i am not saying it definitely was a bug. i am saying i think it's unlikely that it was intentional. people seem to take it as a given that HB tried to rip us off. and i just don't see that. it's a possibility, sure. but nothing more. and relatively unlikely, as i see it.
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In my opinion this was not a bug but only a test of the market reaction to an abusive change in order to know how to implement their future plans. Any developer that actually worked with billing systems knows this so called "bug" is impossible to manifest in a production environment by mistake. This was a deliberate implementation that targeted VAT countries. There's no doubt about it. It got reverted because of the backlash, at least for the time being.
It's already well known they were exploring with price increasing solutions and I strongly believe this was also a part of their tests. The "bug" explanation is a widely used excuse for non-technical persons to justify such actions. "Bugs" do exist and some have drastic consequences but this was definitely not one of them.
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First of all, I am not saying they were not paying taxes in EU, I believe (or at least hope) they did pay taxes. While talking about illegal activities I do not mean them avoiding taxes, nowhere did I mention they did, illegal activity I'm talking about is just misrepresentation of price - VAT cannot be added on checkout, it must be included in presented price of a product. (And anopther illegal activity is change of price while they have active subscriptionns, but on this point I think we both agree that it's plainly wrong to change payment when you are already subscribed).
but i guess it may be possible that they did some kind of update and accidentially enabled a routine that usually only gets called for certain countries like several US states. what happened here is exactly what happens there by default, right?Not really, first of all if they had not intended it for EU they would not have linked EU VAT tables, the mere fact that functionality was linked with actual EU VAT means it must have been intended for EU as well, noone would waste coding additional things for EU if it was only intended for several US states. Second, there's something called QA, such 'bug' would never go unnoticed in testing enviroment and would never make it through to production version.
it's not unlikely that they had a database with all tax rates anyway. you don't hardcode something like that, you put it in some sort of database. or even use a third party source.yes, you don't hardcode it yourself, you can even use outside DB, but it doesn't work the way you describe. Even if they have somewhere in your system DB with EU VAT tables, geolocations etc, it doesn't mean that magically it will suddenly start applying to any code you write. In the code you are writing you gotta relate to this DB in the first place, so someone had to conciously write a code that will relate to said DB, that would pull the data out from it and apply it. Even if you were to use third party solution and not write code yourself, you still gotta modify said code to work in your system. Variable names must match, object and function names must match, it's not as simple as getting code and db from third party and doing copy-paste, you still have to integrate this code with rest of this system, and you have to do so conciously, so like I said, it's pretty much impossible to add something like this by mistake without being aware of it.
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Nope, 12 dollars for me. Ill keep an eye on it next month though
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For me it's 12 dollars. Where do you live? (I have Steam in €)
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Hmm it might be because I live in Sweden where we have our own currency compared to your Euros.
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Are you sure? Even from Netherlands it still shows up as $12 not 12€ to me. If so, then does it still show up as 12€ for you or was it just a temporary glitch?
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Things are looking fine to me. GoGoBundle seems to be properly applying VAT, which is rarely the case with other companies.
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VAT can be withdrawn for any company outside of the european union,
If you are not a company the VAT becomes a profit for developers.
That doesn't feel right. VAT shouldn't be charged for non-VAT countries. Yet, I might speculate this might be poorly explained by them since I don't see any price difference between VAT and non-VAT countries for their bundles. Their end price might have enough margin to also account for VAT where applicable, meaning their end price truly is a final sale price regardless of the region.
I recently spent $2.50 at GoGoBundle and they added a .50 tax. There is no 20% tax in Canada on anything.
VAT is not added but is shown as part of the final price. That was also one of the issues with HB's "bug", adding VAT to the end price. I think GoGoBundle has the same price for everyone, meaning no further charges are applied.
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Popularan, I don't understand why you deleted the question. It was a valid question and others could have had the same question as you.
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Not sure when this happened but I bought a 1$ tier bundle yesterday and it was 1USD, no more no less. I live in Finland. ^_^
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WTH, why we have to pay tax for a digital item? MADNESS.. This is literally getting out of hands .-.
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Because most countries has a tax included / placed upon every goods that is being sold, and digital goods also also being sold
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Update 2: Price reverted to the original value.
No official post yet, but the pricing got reverted to the original value of $12 without any additional tax. Credits to MakiSan for reporting it. I checked it as well and no other taxes are being displayed during checkout. I don't know if that applies to everyone just yet but I think it will after a while. I'll let the thread open for discussion.
I wish to congratulate everyone that took a stand against this A/B testing scenario. Oops, I meant "bug" (albeit fine tuned and elaborate, yet still a "bug" :)). I consider this thread a success in showing the power of consumer over the provider and not the other way around. Good job, everyone!
Update 1: Humble Bundle's Support reacts and says it's a "bug" and they're working on it
Link to their tweet. (Credits to LuckyME for pointing out Humble's response).
Confirmed by users - Sales Tax was added by Humble Bundle for many countries, leading to a price increase of the Humble Monthly bundle with various amounts.
I was interested in "GOD EATER 2 Rage Burst" and was planning on getting the bundle but, guess what, Humble Bundle wants me to pay $14.28 for the monthly bundle. They introduced a Sales Tax that I never had to pay before.
So, for those interested in the Monthly, be careful and have a look over the subscription price and double check you're not being overcharged because it can very easily pass unnoticed.
I moved the thread to the "Deals" section because it affects the Humble Monthly bundle.
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