And 99 Cents: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:billy-mays-nineteen-ninety-five-dollar-
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An oddball one is the Brands-Mart chain located mostly in Florida, where all of the prices end in 88 cents and have 88 in the price as well. When the tax is added, these prices usually come out even. Sometimes prices ending in 88 cents or a similar less than 90 number are used by the store to indicate that an item is discounted; this is common with electronics and games.
Some Goodwill thrift shops price things using a cents figure that is a repetition of the dollars figure; for instance, $13.13. This prevents customers from altering the prices by erasing the
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...
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* However, if paying via EFTPOS or credit card, the amount is not rounded.
This thinking is often carried over to large-ticket items, like cars, at least in the
{{examples|Examples in Media}}
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== Oceania ==
* 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
** 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 [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.
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* Exception: the British music/video/games retailer Zavvi now prices most of its goods in pounds flat.
** Also, ''another'' British music/video/games retailer, Fopp, used to deal in flat prices and adopted the practice before any of the other franchises did. Unfortunately, due to bankrupting and being bought by HMV, only 8 Fopp stores still exist. Zavvi has also gone into administration selling off a handful of stores to HMV.
** With the temporary reduction of VAT to 15%, this has become
** As a point of interest, in PC World a price ending in .97 means that the item has been discontinued and is being sold at a clearance price, making it ineligible for further reductions such as staff discount.
** The joke political party the Official Monster Raving Loony Party actually have the introduction of a 99p coin in their manifesto, to do away with fiddly pennies in change.
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== North America ==
* At least one chain of stores in Pennsylvania ends all prices in wacky numbers like .
* Wal-Mart corporate policy states that stores cannot set their prices to end in 9, 5, or 0, partially because of this trope.
** Wal-Mart, at least in Canada, also uses the "change the cents to indicate a sale": There's actually a particular number that indicates "this product will not be rolled back any more".
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