Is Asinine Parsimony an especially American thing?

[Nava]

Originally Posted by Anne Neville

We tolerate it, and not including the sales tax in the price of items makes things easier for national chains like Wal-Mart, which are selling stuff in lots of different areas with different sales taxes.

The way that's handled in Spain (which also has several areas with different taxes) is by setting up the total price to an amount which is ok for them once the highest tax is taken out, advertise the total amount everywhere, and set their PoS to separate the appropriate tax for each location.

[septimus]

Originally Posted by Blaster Master

I actually like the way we do things. Sure, it's nice to get "free" things from a business, but the bottom line is that it's not free, you're paying for it, you're just not being given an itemized bill.

Using the airline flight as an example, if I'm offered a free glass of wine or whatever, sure, I'll take it. But really the way that works is you're charged the cost of the flight plus the amortized cost of the "free" drinks. For some people, they'd rather not pay that and just not get the free drink. So, instead, they charge the bare minimum of the service and have service fees on top of that. If I'm not really that interested in drinking on the flight, why should I have to pay more so others can?

Sure, it can be a big pain in the ass to get nickled and dimed, and probably most times I'd rather just pay a little more than I need to to avoid that hassle, but in the end it does give the consumer more control over their spending. So I do think that some businesses take it too far, and airline travel is probably one of the worst offenders charging for headphones and drinks and checked baggage and all that sort of stuff, some of which works out to next to nothing and most people would want.

I agree with all this up to a point. The goal is to find the right compromise between efficiency (and hyper-parsimony) and convenience (and relaxing generosity).

You don't go to the barber and say "I don't need my sideburns trimmed ... can you give me 30 cents off?" Or, at the sandwich shop "Hold the lettuce ... and knock 20 cents off."

The question is: Where do you draw the line? Some views, especially the notion that a penny is an important amount of money, lead me to think Americans draw the line too far towards efficiency/hyper-parsimony.

[rogerbox]

I'm an American in asia as we speak, and you regularly are asked for the equivelent of (according to google) 0.00589625 U.S. dollars to make the change a nice round number, so no, it is not an especially American tradition to be hyper anal about pricing.

Do as the romans do.

[Martini Enfield]

Originally Posted by Kobal2

True enough, but that's not what I'm talking about either. Check the price per kilo. That will never be rounded down when the money itself changes. Whether the cashier/manager opts to let you off on a handful of pennies here and there, particularly on large purchases, is another thing altogether.

I'm not sure I follow what you're getting at.

The advertised price doesn't change - if you go to the supermarket here, you'll see (for example) jars of jam for $2.87. If you were to pay for it via EFTPOS or Credit Card, you'd be charged $2.87 for it. If you paid cash for it, the price would be rounded down to $2.85 (since there's no 1 or 2c pieces anymore). I don't recall advertised prices changing when 1 and 2c pieces were done away with, either.

Then again, Australia (and NZ, and, I believe, the UK) have far stronger consumer protection laws than the US, from what I gather, which might have something to do with it.

Originally Posted by rogerbox

I'm an American in asia as we speak, and you regularly are asked for the equivelent of (according to google) 0.00589625 U.S. dollars to make the change a nice round number, so no, it is not an especially American tradition to be hyper anal about pricing.

I've visited parts of South-East Asia and been asked the same thing, but it appeared to me to have more do with with the shop staff not being great with maths (I saw people using calculators to work out fairly simply things like how much change should be given from RM25 for an item that cost RM18.20, for example).

[iamthewalrus(:3=]

Originally Posted by Kobal2

Soda cans in vending machines had been 5f since time immemorial. It's a nice round number, and it's one of those big large coins you tended to keep around in your pockets. When we switched, soda cans started costing 1 euro. Nice, round number, and it's one of those heavy coins you tend to keep around in your pockets. Of course, 1 euro was really 7 francs and a bit...
It was like that across the board. Beer in pubs, groceries, fast food... everything was priced to the nearest euro or half-euro up. Never down.

Changing currencies is not analogous to dropping small coins and rounding prices. In the first case, you're dealing with the macroeconomic effects of bringing multiple currency zones into one and a lot more complexity. It wouldn't surprise me if, say, prices in one former currency zone went up in general, while prices in another went down. In addition, there are cognitive biases about anchoring around whole numbers. So, yes, when you change the value of the underlying unit of currency, you're likely to get new anchors. Things are much more likely to be $0.50 or $0.99 than they are to be $0.41 or $0.83, regardless of the value of $1. So when the underlying unit of currency shifts, you're going to see shifts towards whole numbers.

None of those are factors when you drop the penny (or other small fractional coin).

[ExcitedIdiot]

Originally Posted by Dave Hartwick

Another example of suspect thrift is allowing Walmart to dictate to producers. I recently read that Rubbermaid moved some of its manufacturing overseas-- costing decent American jobs-- because Walmart demanded lower prices. Sure, low prices help consumers, but they're cold comfort to somebody who got laid off or had to accept a pay cut.

I'm so sick of hearing about this.

Large companies buy lots of product. Buying lots of product gives you leverage. Leverage allows you to negotiate lower prices. Rubbermaid could tell Walmart to go pound sand. They could refuse to outsource jobs. Americans could refuse to buy foreign made products.

A manufacturer outsourced jobs, and somehow one of their retailers is taking the blame for it.

[Martini Enfield]

Originally Posted by ExcitedIdiot

I'm so sick of hearing about this.

Large companies buy lots of product. Buying lots of product gives you leverage. Leverage allows you to negotiate lower prices. Rubbermaid could tell Walmart to go pound sand. They could refuse to outsource jobs. Americans could refuse to buy foreign made products.

A manufacturer outsourced jobs, and somehow one of their retailers is taking the blame for it.

It's possible - and I don't have all the facts with me, so I'm speaking in generalities and hypotheticals here - that the retailer had become such a large client of the manufacturer that refusing to play ball would mean the retailer would take their business elsewhere and the manufacturer would collapse without their major account. So in that case, yeah, it is sort of the retailer's fault (although the manufacturer has to take some of the blame for not adequately diversifying their accounts as well).