Why are Finns always double-punished?

It’s a well-known fact that things are expensive in Finland. From food to clothes to cars, we pay extensive premiums on the goods we buy. Just looking at EU-wide price tags that are now common in clothes, the price for Finland is always the most expensive one, save for Norway occasionally topping us. But I had no idea about the ludicrous extra charges tacked on immaterial goods for the privilege of having them delivered to Finland..

I wanted to get an upgrade to my Adobe Acrobat software, so the natural point to start is the Adobe webpage and their webstore. Despite their somewhat slowly working site, I quickly located the product, full with upgrade options and all. There is also an option to download it off the net. Not only is it convenient, but means that delivery costs this way are identical to everywhere in the world – and, thus, the price also would be identical. Or so one would like to think.

Not so. From their Finnish web store I’d have to pay 228eur for the upgrade download. From the US store, I get a download or a box shipped to me for $159 – that’s about 123eur, over a hundred euros less than from the Finnish store!! So by having a US address one would get an immediate discount of 46%. Plus the address, of course, isn’t even used for anything if you’re downloading the product…

I completely fail to see the logic of this pricing. Why are Finns always double-punished with a) prices of everything being higher here AND b) the usable income being lower? It’s nuts and unfair and unlike when shipping fresh fruit from halfway across the world, in this case there is zero logical reasoning for it.

If someone is wondering why their product XYZ is not selling well in Finland, try taking a look at your pricing. Then compare it to the purchasing power here and do some elementary math.