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There are several US states where, by law, retailers are not allowed to give preferential treatment to credit card paying customers over cash paying ones. Whic
by revicon 11mo ago
There are several US states where, by law, retailers are not allowed to give preferential treatment to credit card paying customers over cash paying ones. Which means, in those states, retailers will be required to always round transactions to the cash paying customer's benefit, where in other states the retailer is allowed to round to the nearest 5 cents. This is going to cost large retailers millions.
Interestingly many of them had already put the work into updating the cash register software to allow for this due to the penny shortages during covid.
- bongodongobob 11mo agoIt doesn't cost anyone anything. They can just raise prices 3 cents or whatever.
- phantom784 11mo agoIt gets tricky because sales tax is added on top of the sticker price.
- UncleSlacky 11mo agoThen include the sales tax in the sticker price, like every other country does.
- phantom784 11mo agoUnfortunately I think this is much easier said than done. No single store is going to want to make this change, because it'll make their prices look higher than the competitors'. It'd require legislation, (and even that'd likely be state-by-state legislation). It also means a company wouldn't be able to advertise a single price for a product nationwide, since sales tax rates vary by state (and many times even within a state). Also worth noting that Canada also doesn't include sales taxes.
- revicon 11mo agoThe statistics on consumers evaluating the purchase of something that is $9.99 vs $10 is well proven. Switching to round number prices would cost retailers a whole lot more. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435996900135 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002243599... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23547242_Penny_Wise_and_Pound_Foolish_The_Left-Digit_Effect_in_Price_Cognition https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23547242_Penny_Wise... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435905000813 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002243590...
- zahlman 11mo agoThe rounding is applied to an entire-after tax bill, not to shelf prices. Again: Canada actually did this many years ago. The effect you predict did not appear.
- atq2119 11mo agoLet those large retailers put pressure on their suppliers. Prices haven't exactly been stable recently. I really don't think it matters, but if it did (as you claim) then surely some downward pressure is a good thing.