Code review comment for lp://staging/~mvo/software-center/make-currency-part-of-the-db

Hope my Australian perspective can help solve this for you:
The common thing we see in Australia is that prices quoted as $x.xx refer
to USD and I would expect to see AUD$x.xx or more commonly A$x.xx to
confirm that I'm being quoted in Australian dollars.
We resign ourselves to the $ symbol on international websites being used to
refer to USD and if I saw a price without the A or AUD prefix I would
assume it was being quoted in USD.
On Sep 17, 2012 10:23 PM, "Matthew Paul Thomas" <email address hidden> wrote:

> I just discussed this with John on the Unity side. It is the worst sort of
> problem: tiny but extravagantly difficult.
>
> Americans expect to see prices of the form "$1.23", and "US$ 1.23" looks
> silly.
>
> But people in other countries that have a dollar -- Canada, Australia,
> Hong Kong, Singapore, etc -- expect that "$1.23" refers to their local
> currency, and (unlike the typical American shopping site) there is nothing
> to hint that "these are US prices". So using "$" to mean US dollars would
> be misleading.
>
> Both these groups of people are very large. So I think we really need to
> show prices to both in the way they expect. (Francs have a similar problem:
> there are nine different kinds of franc, of which most -- if not all -- are
> commonly abbreviated just "F".)
>
> I can think of three solutions to this problem -- maybe there are others.
>
> A. Rely on translations to translate "$" into "US$" in non-US varieties of
> English (e.g. en-AU). First problem: we have no idea what proportion of
> English users actually bother to choose their country variant. For example,
> if you migrated from the US to Australia, prices would continue to be shown
> in US dollars, and it wouldn't be at all obvious how to change this. Second
> problem: "US$" would make sense for Spaniards but would still look silly
> for Hispanic Americans.
>
> B. Use GeoIP to work out where you are, displaying "$" for USD if you're
> in the US and "US$" if you aren't. First possible problem: the presentation
> would change if you were in another country temporarily (though maybe
> that's what we want anyway). Second possible problem: errors near the
> US-Canada border (I have no idea whether these actually happen).
>
> C. Use "$" consistently, but have an explicit notice in the footer or
> somewhere, "All prices in US dollars". Later that text can change to a menu
> for choosing other currencies.
> --
>
> https://code.launchpad.net/~mvo/software-center/make-currency-part-of-the-db/+merge/124367
> You are subscribed to branch lp:software-center.
>