Exchange rate rip off

I recently purchased an App for Aus$8.99 through iTunes then I saw on the web site that the real price was US$6.99. Today's exchange rate is Aus$1 = US&1.02. I complained to the App owner and they replied that the price charged by the App Store is decided by Apple.
Since December 2009 the exchange rate between the Australian and US dollars has been roughly 1:1 Apple is making a windfall profit of around 20% on Australian App sales. If this is repeated across all App Store sales it means that Australian app purchasers have been ripped off by hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past six months.
What happens to these windfall profits? And what comeback do we have other than a costly class action?
Maybe someone from iTunes is monitoring this forum.
Ian

Since December 2009 the exchange rate between the Australian and US dollars has been roughly 1:1 Apple is making a windfall profit of around 20% on Australian App sales. If this is repeated across all App Store sales it means that Australian app purchasers have been ripped off by hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past six months.
Others have commented here on similar pricing discrepancies between Australia and US. My question is, why are you surprised? Prices have always been different for identical things in different areas of the world. There's no reason why the prices should be the same. Often there are tax and import regulations that make prices different on top of differential pricing based on what the market will bear. For example, [http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12432275]
What happens to these windfall profits?
Maybe somebody has a nice yacht? So somebody slaps on a $8.99 price. They could probably ask whatever they want (and would) except at some point people would just say it was too expensive. Hey, welcome to capitalism.
And what comeback do we have other than a costly class action?
Don't buy the app. I don't see that any legal action would have any basis. So, I buy a can of Fosters in France, and I buy a can in England. They have a different price. Unless one expects purely idealistic pricing by nice companies who only charge the difference in getting the can from Australia to France and England there will always be a difference. For that matter, there's a price difference in the two liquor stores near me.
Maybe someone from iTunes is monitoring this forum.
No. Except in very rare cases the only response you'll get here is from other Mac users like you. To provide feedback to Apple use the contacts link at the bottom of the page, but I think it extremely unlikely they will write back.

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