6 ms·

> 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

• bigfishrunning 11mo ago
  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.
  • jacobgkau 11mo ago
    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?
    • chokolad 11mo ago
      What's stopping you from doing it now ?
      • jacobgkau 11mo ago
        There's not as much incentive to right now, because I don't have an excuse to round up prices, and customers don't have a case for rounding down prices. This discussion's about the possible effects of rounding, not about whether businesses are in control of their prices.
        • dpark 11mo ago
          > There's not as much incentive to right now Yeah, because stores don’t have an incentive to raise prices usually…
    • niij 11mo ago
      If you seriously think that's realistic I guess I don't know what to tell you.
      • jacobgkau 11mo ago
        Pizza chains have delivery fees that aren't paid to delivery drivers. Restaurants have service fees for cooking food and convenience fees for placing orders (even if paying, in cash, when you pick up), on top of the sticker price of the food itself, which used to just be the price. Some people in this thread have talked about stores having signs saying they'll round change up to the dollar if you pay in cash, and advising to pay by card if you want exact change. I've personally seen businesses have signs on their cash registers that say "our cash register is easily hacked, we strongly recommend paying by cash instead instead of card" (I'm assuming so they can cheat on their taxes). Businesses will do anything they can get away with to make more money, and they can usually get away with tiny fees like this. It's only a few cents, right? Except for them, it adds up.
    • dpark 11mo ago
      This is nonsense. No store is going to charge a multi item fee so that they can try to scrape an extra penny off their customers. As someone else’s already pointed out, they could just do this today if they believe their customers will accept it. Did you forget that stores can just raise prices? Your premise that stores will find a way to force rounding up is nonsense. It’s nonsense because stores aren’t actually going to do it, but also because we’re talking about *pennies*. Oh, no. The store ripped me off for 2 cents. How will I survive?
      • jacobgkau 11mo ago
        > As someone else’s already pointed out, they could just do this today if they believe their customers will accept it. Did you forget that stores can just raise prices? As I already pointed out, customers would be more likely to accept it if there's an excuse for it (pennies are being phased out) than just randomly. The discussion's about what rounding may cause, not about what stores have the legal ability to do. > It’s nonsense because stores aren’t actually going to do it, but also because we’re talking about pennies. Oh, no. The store ripped me off for 2 cents. How will I survive? So this argument is just "you may be right, but I don't care." That's not an argument, imo.
        • dpark 11mo ago
          No one is going to buy “multi transaction fee” because of pennies being phased out. This makes no sense. You have constructed a whole chain of absurd claims that have no basis Did you forget that right now, today, stores willingly take a cent off virtually every price so they can do the x.99 thing? > So this argument is just "you may be right, but I don't care." That's not an argument, imo. No. I can simultaneously believe that you are wrong and also that the fundamental concern is absurd.
    • zahlman 11mo ago
      The experience of other countries that have actually implemented this (see: Canada) demonstrates that this is not actually a problem.
    • tempestn 11mo ago
      Now people stop shopping at your store.
      • jacobgkau 11mo ago
        If the store is e.g. Walmart, then their scale's already large enough that I don't think this is going to put them under. And if every store's doing it, then there'll be nowhere to turn to.
        • Jblx2 11mo ago
          Won't someone think of the children?
          • jacobgkau 11mo ago
            That's an entirely off-topic comment that has nothing to do with anything I said and adds nothing to the discussion.
        • inkcapmushroom 11mo ago
          What if the stores detain you and force you to work in their perfume department to pay off the million-dollar multi-item fee they just thought up? What if they also do a bunch of allergen testing on you to figure out what you're allergic to and then make you exclusively sell perfumes containing those allergens? All because of that darn penny-rounding.
    • dragonwriter 11mo ago
      Now your customers go and shop at a store that isn't cartoonishly customer-hostile. Now what?
• smeej 11mo ago
  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 was the last time you bought something in person, in cash, and bought only one thing? Just think it through for a second.
  • jacobgkau 11mo ago
    > 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?
    • ivanbakel 11mo ago
      > Where's the law preventing stores from imposing an accounting fee for multi-item purchases, conveniently totaling a few cents? Where’s the law preventing someone from doing this right now? I don’t think this cynicism is justified. Similarly, if places are willing to price stuff at $1.03 for the few extra cents they’ll collect some of the time, then they can just raise prices on 99c items right now to $1 to collect the extra cent, which they don’t do because such prices have a psychological effect on the consumer that outweighs the small gain.
      • jacobgkau 11mo ago
        > Where’s the law preventing someone from doing this right now? I don’t think this cynicism is justified. You don't think businesses take advantage of situations for more profit? Take this year's tariffs as an example. As you may've heard, UPS is charging customs brokerage fees of dozens or hundreds of dollars on top of the actual tariff payment; identical shipments sent via FedEx or DHL are only charged a few dollars for the service of customs brokerage, so we know UPS's actual costs for providing that service aren't that high. They saw a situation where consumers would be confused about prices and took advantage of it to make a lot more money by simply charging a lot more than they need to. "But where's the law saying they couldn't have just raised their prices by hundreds of dollars without tariffs? Where's the law?!" There wasn't one, they could've raised their prices for international shipments before the tariffs happened. But consumers would have noticed a lot more and accepted it a lot less. They took advantage of the situation because the situation allowed them to get away with it. > Similarly, if places are willing to price stuff at $1.03 for the few extra cents they’ll collect some of the time, then they can just raise prices on 99c items right now to $1 to collect the extra cent, which they don’t do because such prices have a psychological effect on the consumer that outweighs the small gain. I'm not sure what you're arguing here. You admitted the $0.99 number has a psychological effect that outweighs the $0.01 gain of charging the extra cent. That would be the reason they don't do that. It's not super relevant to the discussion of whether rounding can/will be gamed.
• mtmail 11mo ago
  Sales tax gets applied first.
  • jacobgkau 11mo ago
    Sales tax rates aren't secret. Stores can set their prices with it in mind. Consumers are far less likely to have sales tax rates memorized and to go through the trouble of checking how things'll work out from the sticker price before they get to the register.
• loloquwowndueo 11mo ago
  In practice most items are x.99 anyway.
• nothrabannosir 11mo ago
  Are we pretending that nobody has ever tried phasing out smaller denomination currency, and that we don’t have a vast body of actual case studies to draw from? Why are we running thought experiments at all?
  • jacobgkau 11mo ago
    As others have pointed out, governments sometimes issue actual guidance on how it's supposed to work when they phase out currency. It's not always "just stop making them and see how the market deals with it."
    • water9 11mo ago
      It makes no sense to spend more money to mint the actual money, then the money is worth OK. You might not like it, but something has to be done because to continue in a slow and methodical process 1) forgets that the government is the same entity that runs the DMV 2) people love to throw out criticisms of solutions that aren’t perfect not realizing that it’s still better than the status quo. To do nothing is costing money or in the case of Ukraine it’s costing lives. 3) I bet you $100 You don’t like Trump.
      • jacobgkau 11mo ago
        > 3) I bet you $100 You don’t like Trump. I actually like Trump (or at least his presidency) a lot more than I think most Hacker News browsers do. I like Trump's presidency more than most of my co-workers and many of my friends do. My arguments in this thread are entirely my own, not the product of some political allegiance.
      • hn_acc1 11mo ago
        1) DMV is state-run, not federal govt. 2) Why can't we at least spend 5 minutes studying how it went in Canada, and learn that govt guidance was helpful to the transition, so do that too? 3) Sure. And even more because, even when he DOES pick up on a good idea (I support elimination of the penny), he does so in a haphazard / slipshod way that the end result is often worse than if nothing had been done.
• wat10000 11mo ago
  Sales taxes already result in rounding, which the store could try to take advantage of. They never do. They set prices to end in 99 because it's psychologically more attractive. That will most likely continue. If they're required to price in multiples of 5, we'll see prices ending in 95.
  • dpark 11mo ago
    Unlikely that stores would be required to price in 5 cent increments. That would presumably require legislative action and would fly in the face of gas stations today pricing with fractional cents. But yeah, this isn’t a real issue regardless.
• dragonwriter 11mo ago
  > So everything's going to be $1.03 or $1.04. Rounding would apply on the total transaction, not individual items (because otherwise the individual posted item prices would just be false.) So, if there is an abuse route with round-half-down, it is that optimizing buyers would structure purchase to always total $x.01 or $x.02, possibly splitting planned purchases into multiple purchases to achieve that. But even that isn't realistically a significant issue.
• Jblx2 11mo ago
  What percentage of people live in a jurisdiction without a sales tax? In my local area, sales tax is 8.8%. And if you take the bridge across the river, tax is 8.9%. So there is already rounding involved, $1.03 becomes $1.12167. Unless of course you bill also includes a mix of taxable and non-taxable items like food, etc..