5 ms·
Some interesting complications with rounding I had not heard about before were mentioned here, worth noting I think, especially given the prominence of SNAP in
by Amorymeltzer 11mo ago
Some interesting complications with rounding I had not heard about before were mentioned here, worth noting I think, especially given the prominence of SNAP in the news lately:
>Four states - Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan and Oregon - as well as numerous cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Washington, DC, require merchants to provide exact change, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS).
>In addition, the law covering the federal food assistance program known as SNAP requires that recipients not be charged more than other customers. Since SNAP recipients use a debit card that’s charged the precise amount, if merchants round down prices for cash purchases, they could be opening themselves to legal problems and fines, said Jeff Lenard, spokesperson for NACS.
>“Rounding down on all transactions presents several challenges beyond the loss of an average of 2 cents per transaction,” Lenard said. “We desperately need legislation that allows rounding so retailers can make change for these customers.”
- phantom784 11mo agoFor the SNAP law, could they just round down SNAP purchases in the same way to be compliant?
- mattnewton 11mo agoThey probably will, but that means a POS software update on a tight deadline.
- wongarsu 11mo agoIt's not like pennies just cease existing. You just can't buy them from the mint anymore. I bet if you give customers an easy and free way to deposit change or to turn it into larger denominations you easily get enough pennies to delay ther update a couple years
- mattnewton 11mo agoThere are a lot of solutions, as everyone has mentioned. The problem is not hard, it’s “what color to paint the bikeshed” territory. But we’re still having to solve a problem on a tight deadline based on a tweeted proclamation with no federal legislature specifying exactly what solutions are allowed and what solutions conflict with existing law.
- mrguyorama 11mo agoOr, in reality, most commodity POS systems are actually able to support various countries and tax regimes, and is plenty ready to be configured a variety of ways and work perfectly fine in changing systems. For example, the exact same physical hardware in American supermarkets for self checkout is also used in countries like Australia that have more coins than the US, and the machines literally do not have enough coin slots for every coin, so they just don't dispense certain coins in that place. The POS market is rather robust and has been around the block for quite a while and has no problem managing quite literally arbitrary fees. Businesses in our city added a "cost of living" fee to all bills (just raise prices FFS, so dumb) and they didn't have to go out and buy new POS systems, because POS systems are very configurable. Like, other industries that have been selling software products for decades are actually kind of good at their jobs and it's really just software as a service that reliably makes garbage. POS software can handle all sorts of things you probably don't even realize. Go lookup all the functionality that Square advertises their POS systems have, and understand that they are new entrants to the market and do not have all the features that legacy vendors have built up over decades. The functionality has been so thoroughly figured out for so long and so straightforward, that a POS you bought in the 90s is likely still fit for service today. Meanwhile, retailers are actually open to improving and modernizing their POS infrastructure regularly. They added those coupon printers to existing stacks and didn't have to do anything special because POS systems are absolute legends of interoperability. They use extremely standardized ports, including a special supplementary power version of USB, and are very tolerant to mix and match hardware. POS vendors even sell their hardware without forcing you to buy their software. The system is very open.
- anticorporate 11mo agoThe SNAP equal treatment rule requirement works in both directions: Prices cannot be higher or lower for SNAP recipients. As a retailer, there is an option to request a waiver, though.
- phantom784 11mo agoHow does this work with coupons, discount for loyalty card holders, etc.? Presumably that's fine because a SNAP recipient has access to those same discounts. So wouldn't this be the same - the "cash rounding" discount is available to SNAP and people paying cash?
- rtkwe 11mo agoAnyone can have a coupon the law is about not special fees or discounts to SNAP recipients, and since EBT/SNAP cards are essentially debit cards them always being charged exact change could be litigated as differential pricing in theory, which in a country as big and sue happy as the US means someone will try it eventually.
- jkaplowitz 11mo agoSo, that sounds like a yes, they could round up or down SNAP purchases just like cash purchases.
- Uvix 11mo agoNo, because they'd still be paying less/more than people paying with credit cards, debit cards, or checks.
- nofriend 11mo agojust make the price a multiple of five cents
- mattnewton 11mo agoState and local taxes make this infeasible
- saalweachter 11mo agoRetailers don't, like, have to add sales tax on top of listed prices. They just have to pay it.
- strbean 11mo agoNow is our chance to switch to European style "you pay the price it says on the shelf"!
- Galacta7 11mo agoThat makes too much sense, which is why it won't happen. Though I'd be all for it.
- Octoth0rpe 11mo agoMore specifically, if Americans stopped have a daily reminder of how much is paid in taxes (which IMO isn't egregious by any stretch), one party would have a tougher time whipping anti-tax sentiment.
- EasyMark 11mo agoI don't think this will happen in our lifetimes. It's like not moving the day hour ahead/behind twice a year. A wholly stupid idea that will likely never be fixed on the federal level because of inertia.
- syntheticnature 11mo ago
- AnotherGoodName 11mo agoThey can round down the card transactions too if it’s really a problem to charge differing amounts. For those that seriously think this would be a major problem there was a comedy skit circulating in Australia when this happened. A guy would push his car to the petrol pump, fill with 2c of petrol, rounded down to 0. The guy at the counter just laughed at it. You could in theory do this 1000 more times (would take hours) for $20 of free petrol. At least until the worker got sick of it and enforced the whole right to refuse service.
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- mortar 11mo agoI had this same idea and seem to recall even trying it, but it was mostly thwarted when they added minimum liquid delivery amounts.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- SkyPuncher 11mo ago> enforced the whole right to refuse service. This is what everyone forgets. If you can't provide exact change, then you can refuse service.
- whycome 11mo agoIt’s a self-service gas station. Refuse…yourself? You pumped the gas before paying.
- thescriptkiddie 11mo agoin the us, gas stations require you to pay before filling
- oktoberpaard 11mo agoIn the Netherlands cash payments get rounded to the nearest 5 cents, in both directions. Card payments are not rounded. If I’m not mistaken, you can still demand exact change according to the law and you’re allowed to pay the exact amount (cents are still legal tender). Most merchants wouldn’t be able to give you exact change, so it depends on the situation what would happen. I’ve never heard of such a situation happening, though.
- pests 11mo agoIf someone demands exact change is it allowed to give them more? What if you don't have the exact change?
- BenjiWiebe 11mo agoYou could always refuse service, I guess.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- oktoberpaard 11mo agoApparently I was wrong about that part. Only the part about cents still being legal tender was correct. So you can pay the exact amount, but not demand the exact change.
- coded_monkey 11mo agoYou are mistaken. Merchants are allowed to round to the nearest 5 cents and you can’t do anything about it (except pay by card). Of course, budget stores like Lidl and Aldi still use them but any other corporation is not going to care. http://www.nederlandsemunten.nl/Artikelen_over_munten/De_cent_verdwijnt_definitief/De_cent_verdwijnt_definitief.htm http://www.nederlandsemunten.nl/Artikelen_over_munten/De_cen...
- oktoberpaard 11mo agoThanks for the correction. So only the part about legal tender was correct, which is probably what I was confused with. The relevant part: > The one and two cent coins will remain legal tender, and retailers can choose whether or not to participate. The Netherlands cannot declare the smallest coins worthless on its own in Europe; this must be arranged in Brussels. The government page about this: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/betalingsverkeer/vraag-en-antwoord/mogen-winkeliers-betalingen-afronden-op-0-eurocent-of-5-eurocent https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/betalingsverkeer/vr... > Of course, budget stores like Lidl and Aldi still use them but any other corporation is not going to care. What do you mean with this? Surely the Lidl and Aldi don’t give exact change by default in the Netherlands in 2025?
- a_c_s 11mo agoRight, but getting fined in this situation means the government is incompetent. They should just tell retailers the "right" thing to do and not fine any retailers that follow the guidelines. The idea that this is complicated legally is an example of why so many Americans are so frustrated with their government. Common sense should rule the day, not mindless legalism.
- rtkwe 11mo agoThe issue with "common sense" is there's no way to run anything based on it because you'll get 100 different ideas of what that means in any situation. 90% of customers would be fine with the rounding to the nearest 5 cent plan but there's a streak of stubborn people who'd refuse to accept it and waste some legal time trying to get proven 'right' so the stores want legal clarity so they don't have to deal with that.
- dec0dedab0de 11mo agoI think they should just change the prices to make it work out after tax. It’s not that hard.
- janalsncm 11mo agoIt’s the same issue for sub-penny rounding which happens without issue. It’s the same principle.