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The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

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Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#301

Post by jacobgkau »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #291
jacobgkau wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, if something is $1.01 or $1.02, you round down. If it's $1.03 or $1.04, you round up. So everything's going to be $1.03 or $1.04. Not sure why you think retailers (or any sellers) would ever, ever, ever let this play into customers' advantage. But apparently pointing out that obvious truth makes me a "moron," because you can think of some clever ways to get around it that retailers surely won't work arou…

but then you buy 2 things, and it's $2.06. round down! or you buy 4 and it's $4.12. round down! it'll come out in the wash. there are much bigger things to worry about.

You attempt that at my store. To help ensure my business is sustainable in these hard times (/s), I'm imposing a "multi-item order" fee at my store. Now what?

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#302

Post by jimbokun »

sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #255
binarymax wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My local just went from $3.50 to $4 this week :(

Gourmet high-end Keurig pods are like $0.50 each. Make your own coffee.

If you want to save money get a Moka pot instead of that Keurig garbage.

Even cheaper, tastes better, and takes only slightly longer to make.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#303

Post by estimator7292 »

smallerize wrote: post #238
hollasch wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just American custom to exclude some taxes from the posted price. Many countries include all taxes in the price, something I've always wished we would do in America. After that, I'd love to see the elimination of the custom of always ending fuel cost per gallon in 9/10 of a cent.

Rounding sales tax on each item will often result in a different price than rounding once for the total. The store will collect the wrong amount of tax that way.

Come on, this is not complicated. It's elementary algebra. You sum the rounded prices, then add a credit or surcharge of 2 cents to make the tax come out to a round number.

The tax is on the actual, real amount in your transaction subtotal. You are charged sales tax on the actual, real money you pay for the entire transaction. Then you multiply by 1.06 or whatever the tax rate is. That's how sales tax works.

If one rearranges the equations as we all learned in 5th grade, one can compute the amount that the subtotal must be to get a round number after tax. Then you charge or credit the customer the difference.

Alternatively, the retailer can simply pay the 4 cent difference in sales tax.

That's it. You either do algebra or just pay the difference. It is not complicated.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#304

Post by paxys »

MrHeather wrote: post #6

>But with 20 million customers a year, and 17% of them paying with cash, the policy will eventually cost Kwik Trip a couple of million dollars a year, McHugh said. If we figure two-fifths of cash transactions need to be rounded up and the store is losing an average of 1.5 cents each time, their expected losses would be around $2,000, yeah?

20 million customers doesn't mean 20 million transactions. Considering we are talking about a convenience store I'm sure a large chunk of their customers visit every day, some probably multiple times a day.

Assuming 3.4 million customers (cash users) and 2.5 cents average loss per transaction, it would only take one visit a month for them to cross a million dollars in losses.

Of course at that scale it's not like that million or two is really making a difference to their bottom line. Doing some quick Googling their annual revenue is estimated to be $6-7 billion.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#305

Post by mikkupikku »

sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #255
binarymax wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My local just went from $3.50 to $4 this week :(

Gourmet high-end Keurig pods are like $0.50 each. Make your own coffee.

You can solve this problem even better by drinking instant coffee. Bonus points for it making yuppies cringe.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#306

Post by loloquwowndueo »

jacobgkau wrote: post #281
b112 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're referencing more than pennies, but to speak to pennies, I find the current rounding noise in the US to be weird. Likely, it's just more of the media, talking heads, and youtube personalities trying to turn a nothing into something, story. Back when we did it in Canada, I don't recall a single person I knew concerned about penny rounding. Everyone was sick of pennies. No one cared. Everyone was happy. An…

> Basically, if something is $1.01 or $1.02, you round down. If it's $1.03 or $1.04, you round up. So everything's going to be $1.03 or $1.04. Not sure why you think retailers (or any sellers) would ever, ever, ever let this play into customers' advantage. But apparently pointing out that obvious truth makes me a "moron," because you can think of some clever ways to get around it that retailers surely won't work arou…

In practice most items are x.99 anyway.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#307

Post by quantified »

b112 wrote: post #252
Night_Thastus wrote: post #141

I'd say screw it, get rid of nickles and dimes as well. Quarters can stay, for now. It's a complete waste of money and time continuing to mint such low-value currency. It can't be used for just about anything. Unfortunately, I do see the problem with part of this. For a handful of items where it does matter, it will force people to use cards more if they want to avoid rounding. And the card providers already have a c…

I know you're referencing more than pennies, but to speak to pennies, I find the current rounding noise in the US to be weird. Likely, it's just more of the media, talking heads, and youtube personalities trying to turn a nothing into something, story. Back when we did it in Canada, I don't recall a single person I knew concerned about penny rounding. Everyone was sick of pennies. No one cared. Everyone was happy. An…

When the US attempted to transition to the metric system, gas stations raised their prices per unit volume and the American consumer was convinced that the metric system was bad. I have family that think metric is bad because some fringe people thought there should be 10 hours in a day and 100 minutes in an hour, also something like 10 months a year, and the whole thing is bad because some awkward ideas were floated.

Here, it's a question of resolution, with a proven history that transitions screw the consumer, though maybe it won't be so. We're ok with arbitrary hundredths of a dollar, why were we not at thousandths? The American half cent disappeared a long time ago. You still need to include the cents in a tax bill that runs into the millions of dollars.

It's just an awkward stage in inflation. Eventually a US dollar will be worth what a Zimbabwean dollar was, and we won't have $100 bills anymore.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#308

Post by loloquwowndueo »

sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #255
binarymax wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My local just went from $3.50 to $4 this week :(

Gourmet high-end Keurig pods are like $0.50 each. Make your own coffee.

lol gourmet (coffee) and keurig pods don’t go together in the same sentence.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#309

Post by jacobgkau »

smeej wrote: post #298
jacobgkau wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, if something is $1.01 or $1.02, you round down. If it's $1.03 or $1.04, you round up. So everything's going to be $1.03 or $1.04. Not sure why you think retailers (or any sellers) would ever, ever, ever let this play into customers' advantage. But apparently pointing out that obvious truth makes me a "moron," because you can think of some clever ways to get around it that retailers surely won't work arou…

If you buy two things at $1.03 or $1.04, it's $2.06 or $2.07 and rounds down to $2.05 more often than it's $2.08 and rounds up to $2.10. That's not "some clever ways." That's so basic it's absurd. They don't know how many things you're going to buy. They don't know how many things anyone is going to buy. There's no way to game the entire system for every combination of things people might buy. Never mind this: When w…

> Never mind this: When was the last time you bought something in person, in cash, and bought only one thing? Just think it through for a second.

"In cash" is entirely separate from the rounding debate and is just the "people use cards, anyway" argument. It's not relevant to this discussion. This discussion is about cash. I do buy single items at stores sometimes.

> If you buy two things at $1.03 or $1.04, it's $2.06 or $2.07 and rounds down to $2.05 more often than it's $2.08 and rounds up to $2.10.

Where's the law preventing stores from imposing an accounting fee for multi-item purchases, conveniently totaling a few cents?

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