Activity 1 for folks with too much time on their hands
Haven't posted in a while, but I promise to get back to the energy series -- ethanol, et al., and my solution yet to come. I just have wanted to avoid the blog, what with my apparent inability to not talk about Iraq (sigh). Or TALON. Don't get me started.
So, as I was filling up my gas tank at $2.459/gallon (85 octane, no less: we in Colorado are gouged), I thought, as I often do, that if I had more time I would take my receipt to the cashier and demand credit for the fraction of a cent difference between the calculated cost of the gas and the whole-cent value to which the automated pump had rounded it. As it turns out, on this occasion I was actually saved .0939 cents, so it wouldn't have done any good anyway.
Wouldn't that be fun? Demand the .3 cents or whatever amount in store credit, and then, having gotten another few like amounts, turning in those chits for a full cent discount! And not just for that asinine if universally accepted practice of charging a unit price out to a digit that can't be represented in currency -- the infamous .9 cents on a gallon of gasoline: anytime somebody rounds up on sales tax. Like at McDonald's, where a 99-cent item with 6.2% sales tax winds up costing $1.06 (where's my flippin' .862 change?). Or like Kinko's, where 8 cents per copy becomes 9, instead of 8.5 or whatever. I mean, with my mutual funds, at least the full value of the fraction of a share I have bought is noted, and, in the digital world of trades, the price out to the tenth or even hundredth of a cent is deducted from or added to my account. So it looks funny, but it all works out (until I take it out in cash, but, you know, it's a flippin' IRA, and don't get me started on that).
It just pisses me off, to varying degrees, to see these fractional amounts get consolidated in extra money that I should be accumulating. In this case, it's perfectly rational -- I'm paying more than I should -- but almost completely impractical. Any honoring of credit valued at fractions of a cent could be avoided by any company if its owner posted notice that all prices are rounded to the nearest cent. But it would make them actually take that step, and score one for rigidly adherent truth.
And who wouldn't support that?
So, as I was filling up my gas tank at $2.459/gallon (85 octane, no less: we in Colorado are gouged), I thought, as I often do, that if I had more time I would take my receipt to the cashier and demand credit for the fraction of a cent difference between the calculated cost of the gas and the whole-cent value to which the automated pump had rounded it. As it turns out, on this occasion I was actually saved .0939 cents, so it wouldn't have done any good anyway.
Wouldn't that be fun? Demand the .3 cents or whatever amount in store credit, and then, having gotten another few like amounts, turning in those chits for a full cent discount! And not just for that asinine if universally accepted practice of charging a unit price out to a digit that can't be represented in currency -- the infamous .9 cents on a gallon of gasoline: anytime somebody rounds up on sales tax. Like at McDonald's, where a 99-cent item with 6.2% sales tax winds up costing $1.06 (where's my flippin' .862 change?). Or like Kinko's, where 8 cents per copy becomes 9, instead of 8.5 or whatever. I mean, with my mutual funds, at least the full value of the fraction of a share I have bought is noted, and, in the digital world of trades, the price out to the tenth or even hundredth of a cent is deducted from or added to my account. So it looks funny, but it all works out (until I take it out in cash, but, you know, it's a flippin' IRA, and don't get me started on that).
It just pisses me off, to varying degrees, to see these fractional amounts get consolidated in extra money that I should be accumulating. In this case, it's perfectly rational -- I'm paying more than I should -- but almost completely impractical. Any honoring of credit valued at fractions of a cent could be avoided by any company if its owner posted notice that all prices are rounded to the nearest cent. But it would make them actually take that step, and score one for rigidly adherent truth.
And who wouldn't support that?
posted by heavynettle at 23:23
1 Comments:
Google Answers had some historical info on the Pricing Structure of a Gallon of Gas. Their answer is long-winded and meandering but pretty much confirms that the stupid .9 thing sprung from the same well as most malfeasance: marketing perfidy and the tax code.
Yesterday my car was struck while I was in it passing through an intersection and a mom late to drop off junior to spring-break science camp ran a red light and ran into me. So I may soon have the experience to add a third source of malfeasamce: insurance companies. However, to date, the companies are treating me pretty well. Everyone walked away, though injuries may yet be discovered, knock on wood, as muscles loosen or tighten in the coming days.
But tell me, why it is that cars only get totalled in accidents when they have a full tank of gas? That's got to be another corrallry to Murphey's Law; it never fails.
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