Wednesday 21 October 2009

There's a paragraph for this

Concerning the Codemasters SoM "promotion".
Not only we are not getting any offer comparable to the one US gets.
Their offer is: if player has any multi-month plan by October 31, his accounts gets upgraded with Siege of Mirkwood FREE, while the regular price is 19.99$; not available to Lifetimers tho.
Lifetimers get SoM for free if they buy Adventurer’s Pack.
In other words, if you're a Lifetimer of have any multi-month plan, you pay just 19,99$

Now, offers for Europeans don't include this promotion at all. We always have to buy both.
That's sad, as we always seem to pay more for less, but that's not the funniest part. Math is.

Standalone expansion costs £14.99/€19.99
Adventurer's pack goes for £4.99/€6.99

Special edition however - expansion plus pack - was priced as £19.99/€27.99, while the only difference between it and buying the two products separately is a new, unique mount (another goat)

£14.99+£4.99=£19.98 (notice the extra penny missing)
€19.99+€6.99=€26.98 (notice the extra ONE EURO and a cent missing)

Neither of the offers makes the darnn goat FREE, as advertised on Codemaster's site.
But while I can live with one penny (still unethical), everyone paying in Euros falls a victim to unethical, misleading commercial practices because they do, in fact, pay for the FREE goat the ammount of 1.01€

There's a paragraph for that.

DIRECTIVE 2005/29/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL
of 11 May 2005
concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market and amending Council Directive 84/450/EEC, Directives 97/7/EC, 98/27/EC and 2002/65/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council
(‘Unfair Commercial Practices Directive’)
(Text with EEA relevance)
COMMERCIAL PRACTICES WHICH ARE IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES CONSIDERED UNFAIR
Misleading commercial practices
18. Passing on materially inaccurate information on market conditions or on the possibility of finding the product with
the intention of inducing the consumer to acquire the product at conditions less favourable than normal market
conditions.
20. Describing a product as ‘gratis’, ‘free’, ‘without charge’ or similar if the consumer has to pay anything other than the unavoidable cost of responding to the commercial practice and collecting or paying for delivery of the item.

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