Pound silly, penny wise
It seems that April Fools has come early this year, for the season of silliness has yielded an absolute welter of a stoopid idea.
Serious thought is being given to minting a ninety-nine pence coin.
I ask you? A ninety-nine pence coin!
On what plateau of other-wordly existence do these people come from?
But, it does appear that there is a shred of logic to this otherwise utterly incomprehensible shambles of an idea, no matter how tenuous a grasp on reality it might have.
Apparently, because retailers are forever selling things at 99p or £99.99p and the like, we the consumer are loosing in the region of £160 million a year.
That being the case, the most logical idea is to mint a ninety-nine pence coin, yes?
Right!
So, just getting the retailers to change their age-old practice didn't find its way onto the table for consideration, did it?
But all the same, £160 million a year, that's not an insubstantial amount of money, eh?
Look at all the money we're going to save!
Hang on. Let's cast the light of common sense on this crippled and shadowy mess of an idea.
I went to my local shop / store yesterday and saw a 2-4-1 offer on my favourite low-fat milkshake.
Now normally, each bottle costs 99p, but for that same amount of money, you get two bottles.
Well, I bought four bottles for the price of two.
So thus armed with my two pound coin, I bought said bottled milkshakes.
I should have got two pence in change, but when the change is less than ten pence, I let the shop / store keep it because I know that they put the money into one of the charity donation collectors they have on the counter.
How many more people do what I do?
So either the £160 million a year figure factors this practice in, or there's going to be some seriously depleted charity funds should such a brain-dead idea as to mint a ninety-nine pence coin every get the nod.
A penny for you thoughts?
posted by Wayne Smallman at Wednesday, August 24, 2005
7 Comments:
Here in the antipodes they deleted the one and two cent coins ages back, actually removing them from "legal tender". Now we have "rounding" where, obviously, shops round up or down. It really hasn't stopped the 98/99 cent phenomenon as the marketing power of being one cent under the next dollar is simply too strong, but they have to round. Now here in "rounding" 99c becomes one dollar. Two 99cent items becomes $2, three however would be $2.95.
Get it? Good now keep up.
The one big exception to rounding is if you pay by card/EFT. Then its the exact amount no matter. So it reverts to 99, $1.98, $2.97 etc as above.
Why? Well no coins are needed so rounding doesn't apply.
You lot are just bloody weird!
;-)
Actually, I was on about a similar thing with my dad last night.
We ought to get rid of the 1 pence, 2 pence and 5 pence coins and round up / down from that...
actually i thought it was a good idea!
*slopes back to own blog with head down*
actually i thought it was a good idea!
*slopes back to own blog with head down*
Feh!
;-)
the 99cent phenomenon is silly, but extremely psychological -
hey wayne, is tax included in the listed price? because over here if something is marked as 99cents, it comes out to about $1.05 with tax - in which case the coin would be extreml... naw forget that, either way, the coin is very very silly.
Wayne, i comment you on your charity, but how do you know they don't just pocket the change?
"hey wayne, is tax included in the listed price? "
Depends on what it is that you're buying.
Food stuffs don't get taxed, while other stuff does.
So, if tax is levied on the goods, that's usually inclusive in the price.
But .. if you're buying electrical goods, they usually quote Net and VAT (Value Added Tax) values.
This is because businesses may be buying goods, and in such cases, VAT is recoverable.
"Wayne, i comment you on your charity, but how do you know they don't just pocket the change?"
Usually, I don't give a shit what they do with the money, but more often than not, I see them drop the money into the donations box on the counter...
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