h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Does anyone know why shops have prices on things like £1.99, etc? Surely it would save a lot of peoples' time and effort to have it priced at £2? And is this a British thing, or does it happen in most countries?

2 reasons:

1) It looks cheaper that way, something priced at £9.99 looks cheaper than something at £10.00. I know it doesn't make any difference really, but it seems to work. Also, it lets people use urritating language like "for less than a tenner" etc etc...

2) Tax. Many years ago (and possibly still now, I dunno) tax was charged by the full pound, thus if tax was 5p in the pound, and you where paid £10.00, you paid 50p tax, whereas if you get paid £9.99 you pay 45p tax

Not many people in the UK charge by full pounds (although Marks and Spencer seem to be one), however plenty of things cost even stupider prices like £4.95 etc. Why? Especially when it comes to things like cars, when you're paying many thousands of pounds for a car, why price it £12,999? I suppose in years gone by you could use the extra quid for a few gallons of petrol to get you home with, but...

Having said all this, if things were charged to the nearest 10p, or 50p or pound, we'd have less shrapnell to fend off underground tramps, and irritating charity tin-shakers with.

Apart from making it seem less expensive because some people will drop
the pences (or pfennigs or cents or ören or whatever) rather than
rounding it off, I suspect they want to stop people from calculating
the price of everything they have put into the shopping cart. Because
if they did, they might stop buying things, or put something back, if
they realise they have spent more than they had intended to.
In my case it probably backfires since I round it upwards and as a
result buy less than I could actually afford. Ha!

Well, the above entries seem to have covered the why part fairly well... But I can definitely assure you it's not just a British thing.. except perhaps for the tax bit.

Used to be, 'round these parts, that you could sell something for 49¢ without charging taxes, but for 50¢ there was an entry on the all-pervasive tax chart. Anything over that, as well, was taxed, even if it was $X + >=$0.49 ($1.33 for instance). That was long ago (I remember grampa b*--- erm.. I mean explaining it. ) The tax tables simply group the amounts based on what raises the tax (when rounded) to the next $0.01.

Maybe I should clarify that. I don't have a tax chart here, so...

*grabs calculator*

Lessee... sales taxes right here are currently at 6% so...

A $0.08 item works out to $0.0048 tax which rounds down ($0.00), so you can buy that without paying taxes.

However, a $0.09 item works out to $0.0054 which rounds up to $0.01, so for a $0.09 item you pay tax.

Okay, there's the bottom of the first bracket, now...

An item selling for $0.24 works out to $0.0144, which still rounds down to $0.01, but $0.25 works out to $0.015 which, of course rounds up to $0.02 tax.

All that being said, the tax chart would begin:

"$0.09 - $0.24 ............ $0.01
 $0.25 - $0.41 ............ $0.02
 $0.42 - $0.58 ............ $0.03"

*gasps* Well, whaddya know?! Yet another shining example of the ultimate answer to life, the Universe and everything!

I guess the next question would be...

"What the b!**& h#¡! can you buy for 8 b!**& cents?!?"

My sister reckons they had prices set at 1p below the pound (or whatever...) so that the person on the till would be forced to use the drawer to give the person the 1p change, because there would be a strong chance of them pocketing the money if the customer didn't need any change. But that doesn't explain having cars priced at £12,999 though. I reckon it just looks cheaper than £13,000.

The difference in the UK as opposed to the States is that tax is already included in the price on the item. Whereas in the US if it says $12.99 you will pay tax on top of that.
Therefore by charging £9.99 for something doesn't really affect the tax bracket, which is 17.5% across the board, as the £9.99 includes taxes...

It happens in many different countries and I think mainly for psychological reasons. My Mum always falls for it anyway "Ooh look that's only £9" she say's when it's £9.99.

There's a lot of truth in the 'forced to open the till' theory.

If you check the security cameras on most checkouts, they're not pointing into the store or at the customers - they're focused on the server and the till.

They don't just check for the money going into the cash register - the scanner has both audio and visual 'clues' that an item has been processed (the 'bleep' and the flashing LED).

The customer is reassured that their goods haven't been 'double scanned' by accident. The benefit to the store is that it's made very much harder to 'fake scan' goods (fingers over the barcode etc.) and thereby stop theft by the person serving with the help of an accomplice.

The more sophisticated scanners/tills can keep track of just how fast items are scanned, how long the cash drawer is open, how long people pause between serving customers, Etc. - all of which are/can be used to investigate 'suspect' behaviour!

More on topic, there are specific instances where tax ceilings make a difference 'for the sake of a penny'. Stamp duty when buying a house in the UK is one example.

From what I've seen, in Italy (there are several hundred lira to the pound) they have prices like L450, which makes more sense. You don't fall for the old 'it's only L400' trick, and you don't end up with a pocket full of stupid change.
Something else to consider: why is a pint of bitter £1.27 in our union bar? Is beer like petrol (i.e. the price goes up and down, and to round the price it would be stupid)? It would be easier to charge £1.30 for it, but then, over the quantities people drink it here, the extra 3p would make a lot of difference.

Yes, but I don't think there's an Italian coin smaller than 50L, is there? So it's all the same thing... As for your beer, can you pay for it electronically at your union? Our college bar only takes cash, and charges nice round sums like £1.40 (and even nicer ones like £1.10 if you like Foster's.)

Having "a pocket full of stupid change" is a problem here in the USA. Every now and then you'll hear a bit on the news about how we're going to eliminate the penny from our currency and make the nickel (5 cent piece) the smallest unit of change... I can't help but laugh at this idea. Sure, pennies are dumb -- individually, they're virtually worthless... and to have enough of them to amount to anything means carrying too many of them. But eliminating them will do nothing but shift the focus of frustration to the nickel. Funny how no one seems to be able to predict that.

On the subject of pockets full of change, has anyone heard anything about America's new dollar coin? All I know is that it's large, heavy, and gold in colour. It's a lovely idea, but I can't see it going over too well here... if people are upset about having too many pennies in their pockets, imagine how they'll feel when they're weighed down by ten or twenty large heavy coins.

I must admit I hadn't heard that there was going to be a dollar coin, but there again I'm a Brit so I don't take much notice.
It sounds a bit like the UK pound coin, which suffered the same complaints when it was introduced.
I wonder what nickname its going to get.
When the pound coin was introduced it got nicknamed the "Maggie"
after the then prime minister, this was of course explained as " A brassy bit that thinks its a sovereign".

Canada has a $1 coin and a $2 coin, nicknamed the Looney and the Tooney (obviously playing on the sound of "two") respectively. They're neat coins, but both are somewhat heavy. While visiting Quebec, I constantly found myself with pocketfulls of these coins. When I walked, you could hear the jingling in my pockets for miles in each direction. My pockets had to be lined with titanium just to support the weight.

Seriously, though, I did find it burdensome at times. It was easy to go to the ATM, withdraw a sleek, lightweight $20 bill, and convert it to 10 lbs of coinage with one small purchase. I suppose it's this very frustration that causes Quebec to so heavily utilize the Interac system (a debit card type of thing). Virtually every store there accepts the cards --- even McDonalds (which is amazing to me because McDonalds in the USA takes cash only).

I remember someone in Quebec telling me what a pain it was to get all of the vending machines to accept the new coins. [stated sarcastically] ---> I can't wait to stand in front of a vending machine with nothing but a silly $1 coin and find that the machine won't take it. Imagine having the money to buy something but not being allowed to because of some silly technicality like that.

The £9.99 syndrome does seem to occur in every country I've ever visited, started out as already stated as a way of checking money was put in the till but has lasted as a psychological thing mostly.
Don't you think the whole .99 thing is going out of fashion now though? There are shops here in the UK now that make a point of offering stuff for whole pounds and even the catalogue shopping empire I work for intends to go that way very, very soon.

the NZ govt, in it's infinite wisdom, got a whole batch of $2 coins made in South Africa and they wouldn't work in any machines at all - there's still heaps of them in the supply, which can create problems with parking meters in particular especially as it's virtually impossible for the layperson to tell them apart from proper ones.

they just redid the picture of the queen on our coins too - she's got a double chin now - probably a plot by the republicans, bless'em

we just got new notes this year that have windows in them - they're made of plastic and kinda cool, but they don't fold up at all, which is a pain in the butt - they also burn really strangely and are alleged to be impossible to rip (although i ripped one of my friend's ones in half the day after they came out - he wasn't very happy and i was very surprised )

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Wow! The mint are putting Her Majesty's imperfections, double chins, warts and all, on our coinage! I haven't seen one of these new "double chin" coins. Maybe they just haven't reached the Sarf Arland yet. If it was a plot, I assure you it was nothing to do with me. Honest. I wasn't even there, officer.

just cos i handle hundreds of coins a day, that's the only reason i noticed.

none of them are mine of course, more's the pity

span

still in new zealand, we dont even have 1c or 2c coins the smallest we have is 5c but still, in supermarkets especially you find things priced at like $1.98 or $5.42. but then, people who pay by eftpos or credit have to pay the whole total of say $32.48 whereas cash buyers only pay $32.45.

some places eg woolworths practice "swedish rounding" ie they round it to the nearest multiple of 5c, eg if you buy something worth 5.48 (and you are paying cash) you'll actually pay 5.50, not 5.45. the place i work at rounds down

do the swedes actually do this or is it like dutch elm disease?

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They do something similar. I think the smallest coin in Sweden either the krone or half-krone, so rounding of the total is done to the nearest one of these.