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And 99 Cents: Difference between revisions
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[[File:billy-mays-nineteen-ninety-five-dollar-bill 6031.jpg|frame|[[Billy Mays]] would like to make you an offer.]]
{{quote|"''Have you ever noticed how things cost...seven dollars and ninety-nine cents? Fourteen dollars ''and'' ninety-nine cents? ''Ninety-nine'' dollars ''and'' ninety-nine cents?''"
When the screaming infomercial finally reaches the point of telling you the price you can be sure that price won't be a round number. Nothing will be sold for $10.00, $50.00 or $100.00. Every price will end with .95, .98 or .99.
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The gimmick also lends itself well to advertising trickery, as someone can claim their item is available for "under $30!" Well, yes, technically speaking, $29.99 ''is'' less than $30...
There's also the possibility that people will be fooled into thinking that "$29.99" represents an exact price while "$30" represents an approximation. Odds are, unless this is a jurisdiction with no sales tax (or with value added tax – "VAT content" – already included in the price, European-style), the final price is going to be well over $30 after taxes. Add the endless outstretched palms seeking gratuities in certain fields (tourism, restaurants, taxis...) and the costs go higher still.
In Australia, because the lowest coin used is 5c, prices are normally And Ninety Five Cents instead, but you can sometimes see .97, .98 and .99 on prices. In Canada and Australia, the lowest coin used is 5c but prices are still "And 99 Cents". If that supposed 99-cent item is $1.12 or $1.14 after tax, it will be rounded to the nearest nickel ($1.10 or $1.15) in cash transactions.<ref>The majority of Aussie retailers have POS registers that automatically round prices to the nearest 5 cents, regardless of what number they end in. EB Games, for example uses the Swedish Rounding System.</ref>
* However, if paying via EFTPOS or credit card, the amount is not rounded.
There's also a quirk (at least in Ontario, Canada's sales tax regulations) where prepared meals priced $4 or higher are hit with a 13% value added tax, but the $3.99 special (which buys increasingly little these days) is taxed at a lower rate. The provincial government has tried to revoke this tiny tax break a couple of times, only to meet strong pushback from fast food restaurateurs.
This thinking is often carried over to large-ticket items, like cars, at least in the US—nobody cares about a few cents when they're buying a car, but the MSRP (Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price) in dollars will end in 7 or 5 far more often than it will end in 0.▼
{{examples}}▼
▲This thinking is often carried over to large-ticket items, like cars, at least in the US—nobody cares about a few cents when they're buying a car and the price will have to be haggled to something reasonable in any case, but the MSRP (Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price) in dollars will end in 7 or 5 far more often than it will end in 0.
▲{{examples}}
== Film ==
* ''[[Back to the Future (film)|Back to The Future II]]''
* In ''[[Clerks]]'', Dante remarks that all prices end in 0.99.
** And yet in the background, all the prices end with the number five.
* Present right in the title of the animated film ''[[$9.99]]''.
== Literature ==
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== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Look Around You]]'' shows a machine with a price tag of £999.99½p.
* ''[[Married... with Children]]'' satirized this when Steve, a bank manager, told Al about his idea about a 99 cent coin to make purchases easier. Of course Al mentions the sales tax (present in all but five US states) which is added to the price, making the coin no better than a dollar bill.
* An episode of ''The Antiques Roadshow'' featured an old Sindy doll from the 1960s. The original price was so-many shillings and 11 pence. There was 12 old pence in a shilling, making this the pre-decimal version of the trope.
** Further to this, there were twenty shillings in a pound, so something costing more than £1 would typically be priced at x pounds 19/11d - i.e. one (old) penny below the round number.
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** "It's absolutely nothing!"
** {{spoiler|bucket not included}}
** More generally "NINETY-NINE NINETY-NINE
* A non-financial example appears in ''[[Garfield and Friends]]'', where Wade, after [[Mattress Tag Gag|ripping the a tag off the bottom of a couch and learning that it's against the law]], imagines himself being sentenced to "9,999 years in prison". Wade is relieved: "At least I didn't get life."
== Real Life ==
=== Asia ===
* In Japan, most prices end with 80. As in, it's not 1,000 yen, it's 980. This is probably because the number 8 is considered lucky in Japanese culture, while 9 and [[Four Is Death|4]] are considered unlucky. The reason it's not 88 yen is that 1 yen coins seem to be considered an inconvenient hassle, and many vending machines won't even accept them.
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* The lowest denomination of currency in Australia is 5 cents, ever since the 1 and 2 cent coins were abolished in the 90s. You'd think this would stop places from advertising And 99 Cents, but you'd be wrong (although ninety ''five'' cents is more common).
** EB Games in Australia actually uses the various prices to sort how items are discounted during sales. If it ends with, for example, 84, then it'll be 25% off.
** An [https://web.archive.org/web/20130507113853/http://www.money-au.com.au/news/Credit-Cards/Consumers-buy-into-99-pricing-says-study-_18698717.php experiment] conducted at an Australian restaurant suggests that this pricing trick may actually be effective. After the price of a particular menu item was reduced by a single cent (all prices started at round X.00 figures) customers became 15% more likely to order said item. When everything else was reduced to X.99 to match, the distribution of orders returned to roughly the same as before.
* In New Zealand since 2006, the smallest coin has been the 10 cent. Prices ending in .90 are the most common, but there still are .97, .98 and .99 prices out there.
** It is rare to see a price ending in .95 - there is no fixed rule on whether to round up to .00 or down to .90, although most retailers round down.
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* 99 Cents Only stores in Southern California and a few other places run on this trope. Every price(before tax) will end in a 9 and the most expensive items they sell will cost $99.99. The company also celebrates the 99th birthday of public figures and names 99 year old individuals as honorary spokespersons. Lastly, they say they're open 9 days a week, one store held a wedding on 09/09/2009 costing 99 cents, and their trucks say that, instead of no cash, the driver only has 99 cents.
* Doubly Subverted in Century Theatres. Concessions sell snacks that usually only have a multiple of 25 cents (and most people have a few extra quarters in their pockets). These prices however, already calculate sales tax. The real cost of a large popcorn isn't $6.50, but around $5.96 with 9% tax.
** The real cost is $6.50 because
* 99 cent stores love this trope, of course. In fact, there's a common joke that goes "My family was really rich. We went to the dollar store."
** However, some dollar stores have mostly flat-dollar prices. When every item isn't a single dollar, that is.
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* Political example: The 9-9-9 tax plan proposed by Herman Cain.
** Bunk now he's gone, 2012 primaries.
* The phasing out of the one-cent coin in 2012 in [[Canada]] hasn't stopped the use of this trope there, thanks to the prevalence of paying with credit cards and debit cards.
=== South America ===
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