> require merchants to provide exact change

All the items in my dad's farm shop were priced so they came out to a round dollar amount after tax, and that was 40 years ago.

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tempodox 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But less decent people can’t resist the dark pattern of using $x.99 prices everywhere.

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mulmen 13 hours ago | parent [-]

At big retailers the price tag code indicates what type of price it is. For example the last digits can mean:

0: full

9: sale

8: reduced

7: clearance (item will not restock)

I forget the exact system Sears used but we could tell at a glance if a deal was really “good”.

I’m curious if Sears and WalMart used different systems and if WalMart exploited knowledge of the Sears system to signal better prices to shoppers. Like a full WalMart price being .97 and clearance being .94.

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redwall_hp 12 hours ago | parent [-]

That sounds close to the Sears system to me, but they used the tens place. 8x was used for returned big ticket items, like appliances and treadmills. It would start at 88 and the rightmost digit would decrement to indicate how many weeks it had been sitting there.

It was 00 for full, 99 for sale (the majority of items, except for the one week every year they established the full price for that product), 8x for clearance.

	▲	mulmen 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ah yeah, I forget the details. It was a sophisticated system. I’m curious of the origins. Did this have bookkeeping or business reporting benefits in the pre-digital age? Even when we were using computers at the turn of the millennium it helped signal discount eligibility without having to update and synchronize inventory with promotional offers.

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mulmen 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s far more complicated than that. There is no one sales tax for everyone.

Oregon residents didn’t pay sales tax when making purchases in Idaho. Washington charges sales tax on out of state purchases if that state’s sales tax is less than Washington’s, including if it is zero.