I don’t understand how they kept you from leaving with their quarters.
there’d be a guy handing them out by the door and you’d agree to return any unused ones when you left … ours would also buy rolled quarters …mom would send all of hers there through me and the arcade would give me 15% credit for bringing them in…
I don’t get it - in order for them to make money from this, they’d have to take the quarters from you and not give you bills but I don’t get why anyone would give them back under those circumstances rather than just claiming to have used them all.
Yeah, I don’t get that either - why wouldn’t you just pocket the quarters, play until you are ready to leave, then just say you don’t have any more if they ask? And how does it work if you have 1-3 of them left, so can’t get dollars for them? Just seems like a hassle that most people would avoid by saying ‘yeah, used all the quarters’.
The coin shortage is not present in my neck of the woods (northern Detroit suburbs). I regularly pay with cash for two things I do roughly once a week, one of which will always not be a multiple of 5 cents, and neither place has said anything about coins being a problem. I even asked.
I haven’t noticed a coin shortage, but I went out of my way to avoid using cash even before COVID.
In the US, sticker prices are round, but the actual price charged is not because states and local governments can add on sales tax and merchants don’t have to list the price including tax (which I’ve always assumed is for the benefit of large retailers that operate in multiple tax jurisdictions and don’t want to print separate price labels out for each jurisdiction).
So, for example, in my bit of Florida retailers must charge a 6% state tax and a 1% local tax (on just about everything except certain staples like bread and milk). If I am buying a $0.99 magazine, I can’t pay with a dollar; I’ll need $1.06.
I think it has more to do with advertising across multiple tax jurisdictions, which in some cases are county, city, or smaller size so there’s no way to separate advertisements. Aren’t price tags usually printed locally, and have been for a good while? Stores now usually have bar-coded labels that would be easy to run off of a printer, and older stores just used price tags with a simple number on them.
When was the last time anybody saw a price tag with the price written with numbers actually printed on the tag and the tag affixed to the item for anything? The only thing I can think of is new and used cars and that doesn’t really count because nobody expects to pay that amount anyway. Oh, thought of one more place, a flea market, maybe.
Are you specifically talking about hand-written price tags? - because I see these all the time
Yeah, it’s a strange question. Virtually every shop I go to has the price on a label stuck to the item.
For me it was last time I went to the grocery store, so like 3 days ago. Target has labels on most things, as do gaming stores. Convenience stores tend to be about half and half depending on where they are, clothing stores usually have tags. I don’t know where you got the idea that only flea markets and car dealerships use tags, but it’s definitely not the case where I am.
I believe you, but I haven’t seen any around here. I admit, I don’t get out much, my only regular place to shop is the grocery store. Absolutely none at all in the grocery stores I go to. Haven’t been to Target or a gaming store in a long time. I honestly haven’t seen a price tag in a long time.
well, yes if the grocery store is the only place you go, you’re not likely to see them - supermarkets and one-price stores are perhaps the least likely stores to have individual tags.
I should listen to Pantastic, he knows what he is talking about. The grocery stores around here do have labels with prices on the fresh meats sold by the pound. Just further evidence that I am losing my mind.
It’s required by law here.
Yesterday was the first time I’d actually seen a “pay electronically or use exact change” sign, and it was in two different places. We simply haven’t been out and about much in the past 6 months; when we do pickup at a restaurant we hand them xx dollars which is enough for the bill plus a big tip.
I have a basket on the dresser that we toss coins into. I noticed the other day that it was even emptier than I thought it ought to be (see, there IS a shortage!!) but it turns out my husband was raiding it. He’d hit the nearby ATM periodically so we had some cash, then he’d go to the convenience store and buy a drink to break one of the 20 dollar bills so he had smaller bills - and he’d give them coins to round out the price so he only got bills back.
Anyway: yesterday we went to the beach for a day. I popped into a candy store to get something to send to my daughter and they had one of those signs (they also had a tip jar which is unusual in a retail store). My bill came to 20.20. I didn’t have a credit card, but I had plenty of bills. I gave the clerk 21.00 and just told her to toss the difference in the tip jar.
On the drive back, we stopped for gas and I used the restroom, and decided to buy a snack. They had a similar sign. So yeah, I used a credit card to buy a package of M&Ms.
I think it’s a self-fulfilling thing, personally. Most people who might be “hoarding” coins at home are not out spending and acquiring coins. And if you see one of those signs, you’re likely to use a credit card vs cash anyway so no coins are getting sequestered.
Just as a footnote, the Royal Mint has announced that it won’t be making new 2p and £2 coins for the next ten years.
The BBC story above discusses the effects of changing demand (and the difficulties of estimating it).
And I’ve just remembered that Italy had a problem like this, in pre-euro days. My guess is that the European Central Bank has a better grip on estimating and managing demand, and can use the whole range of production facilities across all member states to adjust to demand.
This reminds me that the one time I was in Italy with a tour group, around 1998, we came into the country from Austria and the first place we stopped at had broken rolls of 1000 lira coins on top of the registers and were using them to give change. Everywhere else we went, they had 1000 lira bills. I’m not sure if it was an experimental thing in the region we passed through or what; the broken rolls on the register made it clear that they were not used to handling them. Not particularly relevant, but it’s amazing what weird things get stuck on one’s memory. (About 1700 lira to the dollar then IIRC)
WRT price labels.
No supermarket that I use has them. The price is on the shelf edge and the items have a barcode printed on by the manufacturer. This can be a problem if the shelf price does not match the till price - I scan my shopping myself and found two discrepancies last year. Only a couple of pence but it is still illegal and mounts up over thousands of sales.
Isn’t the price on the shelf edge a ‘Price Label’ by definition? And it’s something which is printed by the store, rather than printed by central corporate office and shipped to the store?