Working retail, I know it’s a sneaky way to deceive people. Regular price $29.99, sale price $19.99. Somehow people think that’s a 50% discount but it isn’t when you see it as $30 versus $20.
@spitfire6006006 It’s all about wording, when trying to get people in the store. I always hated trying to explain to customers how the sales weren’t what they were thinking, because the wording messes with peoples’ heads.
@spitfire6006006 I frequently look at the clearance items and they have signs saying “As low as 90% off” and Mrs cengland0 keeps assuming that everything is 90% off. Same thing as the racks that say “As low as $3.99” but contains items for $20. She doesn’t get it and I keep explaining it over and over again.
@Thumperchick You would think politicians would raise the tax that extra 1/10 cent and probably generate a couple million dollars more in revenue each year.
@Lister Strangely enough, the smallest legal unit of US currency is the mill, which is 1/1000 of a dollar, or 1/10 of a cent. I believe at some point in our distant past some localities in the US created mill currency for paying taxes or something. But nowadays, I think the only thing anyone buys in mills is gasoline, and of course gas pumps usually round UP to the nearest cent.
@Thumperchick The story I’ve long heard is closer to @Lister’s — anything can legally be priced to tenths of cents, but doing so for fuel caught on as an extension of the .99 trick once pumping technology was sufficiently precise to allow it. Being drippy-drops of a liquid, combined with an early example of the aforementioned precision made it commonplace and it just stuck around.
There is a good chance that I’m wrong, but I remember reading a big ol’ thing about it once, and it’s an interesting narrative if nothing else.
Also, it’s apparently possible to enter any digit for the tenths of a cent in a fuel price. I bought has a few months ago for $2.100 and wondered how much crap an employee was going to get for improperly setting the fuel price.
@djslack My father told us stories about the 9/10ths being the way gas stations were competing in pricing wars when gas was cheap. seeing 5/10ths of a cent was common. Now it’s just a marketing ploy because you see $2.199 and say gas is $2.19, not $2.20 as it really is.
@Lister I checked for the actual fuel tax rates in multiple states a while back, and not a single one of them was at a nine-tenths number. The custom of nine-tenths pump pricing goes all the way back to the '50s at least, and was always just a marketing gimmick. You could never pay in tenths of a cent…
But to end the price in 9/10ths, you need to look at the federal tax rate of 18 and 4/10 and then look at states that have taxes ending in 5/10ths to get to the 9/10ths total.
Federal Tax Rate: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=10&t=5
These three can be rounded to 5/10ths:
Massachusetts 26.54
Nevada 50.48
Ohio 38.51
Ahem…actually, I can remember small “silver” colored coins in St Louis a long time ago that were the previously mentioned ‘mill’ coins (they also had other colors (red/green) at other times). You could in fact use them to pay for things. Not sure if they have officially been retired or not, so they may technically still be legal tender.
Living in a state with no sales tax and in a city that values quality and efficiency, ninety-nine-centing is laughable. Almost no local/independent business is going to waste their time with fractions of a dollar for the sake of antiquated marketing psychology. That’s chain store territory… sad, sad failing chain stores.
Its still gets a hearty, “why not” from me in places where you have to factor in sales tax, I guess. But we should really kill off the penny already.
@djslack if you’re in a small local business and something is worth $100 it’s usually priced at $100. It’s a mark of quality to display confidence with your pricing. Pretty much every restaurant that doesn’t have a drive thru has ditched the decimal places. I only ever have to break out quarters if I’m buying a cheap beer at a dive bar (they’re useful for the jukebox too, I guess) but I usually pair it with a shot of whiskey to round things out. Older and bigger businesses still use nines, but it’s definitely on its way out.
Also, I guess I meant laughable as in " I laugh at the idea of wasting time writing 9s and counting out pennies"
I just love it when an advertisement says you get something for purchases over a certain amount, but almost everything they have is at least 1¢ below that amount.
@TheCO2 Just the other day, I received a coupon for Staples. $10 off a $10 purchase. It was a free item if I could find something for $10. Many items I was interested in cost $8.99 or $9.99 so I’d have to buy two items. I eventually found something for $11.99 and paid the $1.99 (food item so no tax).
Couldn’t use the coupon on sale items and if it didn’t come up to $10, you couldn’t use the coupon. I asked if I could just let them keep the penny but the answer was no.
@cengland0 I had that happen on a t-shirt website. Almost all the shirts were $9.99, but if you spent $10 you got a second shirt free.
A lot of people don’t realize this amount DOES NOT include tax. When I was cashiering (PetSmart is the king of tricky wording), there was many instances of people buying things that came up to over the amount, but they were mad they didn’t get the discount. I don’t know how many times they would try to nickel and dime it up to the amount, using cat food cans.
Not so much concerned in what things cost. But I still use cash a lot instead of credit. When I go to the store and they try to charge me $5.06 or $10.07 Or $15.04 I refuse to do it and tell them hello I’m a loyal customer and there’s no real need to punish me by making me carry around $.94 change; then I make them find something else I can purchase at the checkout line to minimize my purchase change.
@TheCO2
They have or could. But, there’s a marketing ploy in there and the mint still makes their money. The only group it would help by eliminating change would be the consumer and who cares about the consumer. They love consumer money, but the consumer?
I can say with 100% certainty that this marketing ploy works on my wife. If the price tag says $29.99, my wife will say “This is only twenty dollars”. $199.99 means “this costs one hundred dollars”.
Pricing anything at .99 works best when it makes the first digit drop down a number. For example going from $20 to $19.99 is much better than from $21 to $20.99. The most psychologically effective is when it drops a digit like $100 to $99.99 or $10,000 to $999. Kevin Hogan has written a lot of articles on sales persuasion (KevinHogan.com) that are pretty interesting. I would be surprised if the guys at Meh have taken ideas from there, like the 3 different models “goldilocks” pricing makes people buy the middle priced model.
I never accept pennies in change for cash purchases. I either tell the cashier to keep it, or if they have a “take a penny, leave a penny” dish, I toss them in there. IMO, pennies are a waste of time. In fact, I think the gov should get rid of nickels and (maybe) dimes, too. Just round everything to the nearest dime/quarter.
@macromeh PetSmart has a donation box (at least some do), at the registers. A lot of people would throw their pennies in that box; some would drop all their change in the box.
The bad thing about the donation box at most retailers or the “would you like to donate a dollar to _____” is the money doesn’t reach the actual charity. Usually used to pay the executives or admin fees.
@meh427 I completely understand the trust issues, here. I have a lot of qualms about PetSmart, but they are very respectable when it comes to PetSmart Charities. I have personally seen the money in use and the way they take care of their adoption partners, using the donations.
Back when I was in college I worked at a pizza parlor. Drunk students would come in all the time and ask for a discount. My pat answer… “sure, I can offer you one for the price of two”. When they said “hell yeah” they were always shocked at the resulting tab…
@chienfou It’s my interlingual-pun response to the 99-cent price thing. I’m told that it has a slightly surreal nature for people who speak German because they reportedly don’t do puns. (But so many other things about Germans and humor are wrong that I’d be unsurprised if this was another.)
So basically, here’s a test to see how committed you are to refusing the $.99 price point. For instance, would you refuse to buy an IRK if it was $4.99?? I kind of hope so as it would help increase my odds of getting one.
Hey @snapster – how about trying that out -after you filter all those who bitched about the $.99 out of the running from getting one!
Working retail, I know it’s a sneaky way to deceive people. Regular price $29.99, sale price $19.99. Somehow people think that’s a 50% discount but it isn’t when you see it as $30 versus $20.
@cengland0
$2.149
@thismyusername ahh yes gas prices
only 2.999 per gallon
Sales tax negates the .99 aspect, so who are the sellers really trying to fool?
@narfcake
Oregonians? … no sales tax.
@matto121
@matto121 new Hampshirite here no sales tax suckas!!
It wouldn’t be as bad if some places didn’t advertise $19.99 as “Under $20!”
@spitfire6006006 It’s all about wording, when trying to get people in the store. I always hated trying to explain to customers how the sales weren’t what they were thinking, because the wording messes with peoples’ heads.
@spitfire6006006 I frequently look at the clearance items and they have signs saying “As low as 90% off” and Mrs cengland0 keeps assuming that everything is 90% off. Same thing as the racks that say “As low as $3.99” but contains items for $20. She doesn’t get it and I keep explaining it over and over again.
Gas stations take it one step further and show it to 9/10 of a cent. I don’t even know how they are allowed to do that.
@Lister I believe that’s usually due to the taxes on the fuel, more than the gas station being shady.
@Thumperchick You would think politicians would raise the tax that extra 1/10 cent and probably generate a couple million dollars more in revenue each year.
@Lister Strangely enough, the smallest legal unit of US currency is the mill, which is 1/1000 of a dollar, or 1/10 of a cent. I believe at some point in our distant past some localities in the US created mill currency for paying taxes or something. But nowadays, I think the only thing anyone buys in mills is gasoline, and of course gas pumps usually round UP to the nearest cent.
@Thumperchick The story I’ve long heard is closer to @Lister’s — anything can legally be priced to tenths of cents, but doing so for fuel caught on as an extension of the .99 trick once pumping technology was sufficiently precise to allow it. Being drippy-drops of a liquid, combined with an early example of the aforementioned precision made it commonplace and it just stuck around.
There is a good chance that I’m wrong, but I remember reading a big ol’ thing about it once, and it’s an interesting narrative if nothing else.
@Thumperchick @lister it’s not shady, but it is just marketing…
https://www.marketplace.org/2014/02/24/business/ive-always-wondered/why-do-gas-prices-end-910-cent
In the wholesale market fuel can be priced out to 5 decimal places. This makes some sense when you are dealing in tens of thousands of gallons.
Also, it’s apparently possible to enter any digit for the tenths of a cent in a fuel price. I bought has a few months ago for $2.100 and wondered how much crap an employee was going to get for improperly setting the fuel price.
@djslack My father told us stories about the 9/10ths being the way gas stations were competing in pricing wars when gas was cheap. seeing 5/10ths of a cent was common. Now it’s just a marketing ploy because you see $2.199 and say gas is $2.19, not $2.20 as it really is.
@twt property taxes still use mils
@tightwad I vaguely remember seeing 5/10ths. I thought maybe I was making things up, in my head.
@Lister I checked for the actual fuel tax rates in multiple states a while back, and not a single one of them was at a nine-tenths number. The custom of nine-tenths pump pricing goes all the way back to the '50s at least, and was always just a marketing gimmick. You could never pay in tenths of a cent…
@werehatrack I just checked and Wisconsin has a state tax of 32 and 9/10 cents on gas and California has 66 98/100 cents. This is if you believe Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States
But to end the price in 9/10ths, you need to look at the federal tax rate of 18 and 4/10 and then look at states that have taxes ending in 5/10ths to get to the 9/10ths total.
Federal Tax Rate:
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=10&t=5
These three can be rounded to 5/10ths:
Massachusetts 26.54
Nevada 50.48
Ohio 38.51
@Lister @werehatrack
Ahem…actually, I can remember small “silver” colored coins in St Louis a long time ago that were the previously mentioned ‘mill’ coins (they also had other colors (red/green) at other times). You could in fact use them to pay for things. Not sure if they have officially been retired or not, so they may technically still be legal tender.
@chienfou @Lister @werehatrack I learned something new today about my state!!!
@Lister @tinamarie1974 @werehatrack
yep… I’m THAT old!
@chienfou I was not gonna say THAT!!!
Living in a state with no sales tax and in a city that values quality and efficiency, ninety-nine-centing is laughable. Almost no local/independent business is going to waste their time with fractions of a dollar for the sake of antiquated marketing psychology. That’s chain store territory… sad, sad failing chain stores.
Its still gets a hearty, “why not” from me in places where you have to factor in sales tax, I guess. But we should really kill off the penny already.
@Oneroundrobb in your efficient city, do they do ninety-nine dollar prices?
@djslack if you’re in a small local business and something is worth $100 it’s usually priced at $100. It’s a mark of quality to display confidence with your pricing. Pretty much every restaurant that doesn’t have a drive thru has ditched the decimal places. I only ever have to break out quarters if I’m buying a cheap beer at a dive bar (they’re useful for the jukebox too, I guess) but I usually pair it with a shot of whiskey to round things out. Older and bigger businesses still use nines, but it’s definitely on its way out.
Also, I guess I meant laughable as in " I laugh at the idea of wasting time writing 9s and counting out pennies"
It keeps the sign makers in business printing all those 9s.
@medz Damn upside down 6s: stealing jobs from hard working American sign makers. Congress should do something about it.
I just love it when an advertisement says you get something for purchases over a certain amount, but almost everything they have is at least 1¢ below that amount.
@TheCO2 Just the other day, I received a coupon for Staples. $10 off a $10 purchase. It was a free item if I could find something for $10. Many items I was interested in cost $8.99 or $9.99 so I’d have to buy two items. I eventually found something for $11.99 and paid the $1.99 (food item so no tax).
Couldn’t use the coupon on sale items and if it didn’t come up to $10, you couldn’t use the coupon. I asked if I could just let them keep the penny but the answer was no.
@cengland0 I had that happen on a t-shirt website. Almost all the shirts were $9.99, but if you spent $10 you got a second shirt free.
A lot of people don’t realize this amount DOES NOT include tax. When I was cashiering (PetSmart is the king of tricky wording), there was many instances of people buying things that came up to over the amount, but they were mad they didn’t get the discount. I don’t know how many times they would try to nickel and dime it up to the amount, using cat food cans.
Not so much concerned in what things cost. But I still use cash a lot instead of credit. When I go to the store and they try to charge me $5.06 or $10.07 Or $15.04 I refuse to do it and tell them hello I’m a loyal customer and there’s no real need to punish me by making me carry around $.94 change; then I make them find something else I can purchase at the checkout line to minimize my purchase change.
@meh427
@meh427 You would think, by now, they would have a system to eliminate change, by rounding everything to the nearest dollar, including tax.
@TheCO2
Wanna ask her to send me $5,999,999.99?
I’ll send back $5 Million.
@TheCO2
They have or could. But, there’s a marketing ploy in there and the mint still makes their money. The only group it would help by eliminating change would be the consumer and who cares about the consumer. They love consumer money, but the consumer?
@meh427
George Carlin had an answer for that many years ago…
Skip to 2:50 for his solution.
I can say with 100% certainty that this marketing ploy works on my wife. If the price tag says $29.99, my wife will say “This is only twenty dollars”. $199.99 means “this costs one hundred dollars”.
@DrWorm So clearly you did not marry her for her intelligence…
Pricing anything at .99 works best when it makes the first digit drop down a number. For example going from $20 to $19.99 is much better than from $21 to $20.99. The most psychologically effective is when it drops a digit like $100 to $99.99 or $10,000 to $999. Kevin Hogan has written a lot of articles on sales persuasion (KevinHogan.com) that are pretty interesting. I would be surprised if the guys at Meh have taken ideas from there, like the 3 different models “goldilocks” pricing makes people buy the middle priced model.
@robnelson2
well maybe not that one! If you drop the price from 10K to 999 I’d be all over that!
(and now you see why this is something that retailers use so much!)
I never accept pennies in change for cash purchases. I either tell the cashier to keep it, or if they have a “take a penny, leave a penny” dish, I toss them in there. IMO, pennies are a waste of time. In fact, I think the gov should get rid of nickels and (maybe) dimes, too. Just round everything to the nearest dime/quarter.
@macromeh PetSmart has a donation box (at least some do), at the registers. A lot of people would throw their pennies in that box; some would drop all their change in the box.
@macromeh
Preach - keep the quarter.
Ditch the rest of the shrapnel.
@TheCO2 I did just that the other day at our Habitat for Humanity ReStore store.
@macromeh If you have an extra 1,000,000 pennies lying around I’ll take them off your hands.
The bad thing about the donation box at most retailers or the “would you like to donate a dollar to _____” is the money doesn’t reach the actual charity. Usually used to pay the executives or admin fees.
@meh427 I completely understand the trust issues, here. I have a lot of qualms about PetSmart, but they are very respectable when it comes to PetSmart Charities. I have personally seen the money in use and the way they take care of their adoption partners, using the donations.
@TheCO2
There are still some great stores, even if they’re chain stores.
@meh427 I wouldn’t say PetSmart is a great chain, in general, though. When they were bought out, by BC Partners, the company went to shit.
@TheCO2
I think the best of a lot of businesses until I research them and then get depressed to find the real news.
Back when I was in college I worked at a pizza parlor. Drunk students would come in all the time and ask for a discount. My pat answer… “sure, I can offer you one for the price of two”. When they said “hell yeah” they were always shocked at the resulting tab…
BTW
Thanks mediocrebot I don’t think I could have made that connection without the example.
Nein!
@werehatrack
Was ist denn los?
@chienfou It’s my interlingual-pun response to the 99-cent price thing. I’m told that it has a slightly surreal nature for people who speak German because they reportedly don’t do puns. (But so many other things about Germans and humor are wrong that I’d be unsurprised if this was another.)
Not digging this $0.99 thing. What gives
So hard to restrain my sarcasm sometimes. Still resisting for now.
So basically, here’s a test to see how committed you are to refusing the $.99 price point. For instance, would you refuse to buy an IRK if it was $4.99?? I kind of hope so as it would help increase my odds of getting one.
Hey @snapster – how about trying that out -after you filter all those who bitched about the $.99 out of the running from getting one!