Amazon most likely does small amount transactions in aggregate, at a later date, which saves them a bunch of money in fees. I remember when iTunes started up and Apple was charging 99 cents per song and there was a great hullabaloo about how would Apple collect all those 99 cent charges and still be able to pay the processing fees?? They decided to aggregate the charges to save on fees. If you just buy one song from iTunes you’ll get a receipt a few days later. Same with Amazon Music now too (unless you buy several songs, which they end up grouping and charging together but not always all songs on one receipt).
Many years ago after paying off my student loan from a bank in another town I got a bill from them stating that I owed 4 cents on the loan.
Even though this was eons ago the first class postage to notify me cost more than the charge (30 cents I think).
I put a nickel in the return envelope and requested that they send me the change. They did.
In a similar theme, I bought a new iPhone last fall and wanted to pay outright rather than financing it over two years. They said it was $100 more if I didn’t finance it, but if I wanted I could finance a part of it. I asked if I could finance one dollar and pay the rest (nearly $900) outright, and they said yes. So sure enough I started getting monthly loan repayment charges of $0.08 on my bill. Then I went online and did a premature payoff on the entire loan.
I just bought something on ebay, including free shipping from China, for 1¢.
The dumb sucker who outbid me on the last one paid 7x what I did. Ha-ha!
Rats … ninja’ed …
I received a request for a political contribution from my Senator whom I disliked … so I wrote a check for 1¢ … haha … yeah, it cleared the bank AND my name was added to the mailing list … they spent close to $10 in postage through the campaign on mailing crap to me …
I’d like to think I helped defeat the sorry bastard …
On a related note, I have had this happen a few times…
In Ireland a lot of places round change to the nearest 5 cents. So if the total was €5.02 I would pay €5, if it was €5.04 I would pay €5.05, etc etc.
The self serve tills in many shops will do this automatically when checking out. So for example if the bill is €5.02 and you feed a €10 note into the machine, you will get €5 change.
The problem is when I get rid of all my change into the machine, I have paid €5 and all that is left is the balance of 2c. Which will get rounded down. Except that only happens after all the money is paid and the machine is calculating how much change to give. But I have no change left to clear the 2c that I don’t technically owe anyway! :smack:
The last time this happened I had to use a €50 note to clear the outstanding amount of 2c, and then get €50 back in change of course. I live in fear of getting caught with the exact amount only and not enough to cover that pesky 2c if I have to!
Kind of related… using BillPay, a free electronic payment program provided free by the Credit Union, I would add my friend as a Payee and then send him $1.00. Then, when he received the check in the mail, he would cash it and send me $1.00 back through Bill Pay. We joked about how we were personally stimulating the economy at no cost to us personally…I guess we need sentient human supervision.
I occasionally get $10 Amazon gift cards in exchange for points. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve purchased a 99¢ kindle book to use up the balance.
Slightly off topic but similar:
My car insurance was something like $90.83 per month. When I was buying a new car, and trading in one of the old ones, I called them and have them all the details. At the end the guy laughed “Your new charge will be… $90.82 per month”
And that’s how I became rich.
What would happen if, at that point, you just gathered your stuff and walked away? Would they send the Marines to come arrest you?
Apparently, a 1¢ charge to PayPal trips a fraud alert & they blocked my card. I called the bank & they told me the tried to contact me; when I stated that I didn’t receive any notification, they confirmed the phone # then told me they sent me a text. Ummm, landlines can’t receive text messages. :smack:
They also told me they didn’t honor the 1¢ txn, but I got the <Shipped> email notification overnight. Now I’ll have to wait a few weeks to see if it really was shipped.