Comment by jacobgkau
8 hours 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?
8 hours 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?
Now your customers go and shop at a store that isn't cartoonishly customer-hostile. Now what?
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?
> 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.
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.
If you seriously think that's realistic I guess I don't know what to tell you.
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.
The experience of other countries that have actually implemented this (see: Canada) demonstrates that this is not actually a problem.
What's stopping you from doing it now ?
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.
> There's not as much incentive to right now
Yeah, because stores don’t have an incentive to raise prices usually…
Now people stop shopping at your store.
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.
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.
Won't someone think of the children?
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