Dollarama in Canada already does this and it's all right. They have $1.25, $1.50, and $2 items specially marked off as well.

That place is nice for candy.

I was just thinking about this after doing a bunch of school shopping with my son last weekend. I'm really sick of the .99 gimmick.

I like the round pound, only because it ryhmes though.

Of course we are still fooled. Where is the data for their assertion? I doubt 99 pricing will go away here anytime soon.

For immediate comparison, I find the flat $10 + 5 pricing on shirt.woot to be much better than the $XXX.99 + 5 pricing on the regular deal.

I certainly appreciate it. It's done elsewhere in Europe, on occasion, as well. I rather enjoyed shopping in a "euro store" in Hannover (cheap utensils and things to use in a hotel room, and we've already had THAT discussion).

I was shocked to hear on an ifomercial recently that the product was "Only 20 dollars!"

I couldn't believe my ears.. not $19.95?! What is the world coming to?!

(Hopeful answer: It's senses!)

@Kimaroo - 20% More Kitty Added!: *infomercial

They just want every last penny. Damn bloodsucking vampires.

1 Dollar sounds nicer then ninety nine cents.

I prefer it as well, it does seem a little more honest. Although as pointed out maybe they just figure they'll gain 1 center per item and they probably figured that's a lot of money over time.

Pennies are annoying, but less annoying than a pocket full of dollar coins.

This whole idea of it being to make us think of a price as being lower than it is is a myth. Widespread but nonetheless untrue.
.99 pricing was invented by Frank W Woolworth so that his clerks would be forced to open the register and give the customer change, thereby creating a paper trail in the cash register of each transaction.
Before this it was quite common for department store clerks to just pocket the payment.

Marks and Spencer in the UK have been doing this for a few years.

I've also heard that part of the point of the .99 was to make sure that the sales person had to open the register to get a penny out in change - that stopped them just taking your twenty (or whatever) and pocketing it. Thanks to printed receipts, electronic registers, and the fact that cash is used less (I can't recall ever buying something like clothes with cash), that's less relevant.

The who .99 thing has never fooled me, but I'd be shocked if they ever did away with it here in the US. I think there are plenty of people that are still tricked by the 99 cent thing on the end. Back when I worked in a 1 hour photo shop, people would ask the price and I told them $6.99 or whatever, and they would say "Oh $6? Well that is pretty cheap!"

There are a few stores in the US that are doing this, Dollar General comes to mind. Everything is 1$, $1.50, $2 etc not some weird combination of dollars and cents. I always hated .99 pricing and I knew about the gimmick probably since I was 8 years old.

There are still gullible people that fall for it though, most notable when a friend told me she bought a Nintendo DS at Gamestop for $109 and later I found out the price was really $109.99 but they had it advertised as $109 with a very tiny 99 cents on it, so in reality $110.

The worst offender of this is a grocery store called Tops over here, not only do they have well above average prices but their prices are weird amounts like $2.17 and $3.71 for example. They also seem to raise the prices in increments which is how this comes to be in the first place. Needless to say I hate the store and avoid it as much as possible. I don't see how they are going to last very long here when the new super walmart opened up and everyone is flocking there.

I wish pricing in the U.S. would include taxes in the price...like that Taco Bell commercial with the 89 cent burrito counting out change (which is inaccurate since there would be tax of some sort). Not that it is hard to figure out or anything, but would make it easier knowing exactly how much something is before you buy it.

I wish they would start at the gas pumps and kill the 9/10ths of a penny

@mbz32190: The sad truth is the different counties decide what surtaxes are added. So here in Florida the State sales & use tax is 6% but the tax you pay differs county to county due, so you can end up paying 6.25% in Achula

@full.tang.halo: ...Stupid keyboard
or 7.5% in Escambia or Monroe counties

@Grabraham: no kidding.

I'm all for this, except for the issue of tax- in order to stay at round numbers, stores would have to actually make their prices even more screwball than normal... for instance, if a dollar store wants to keep it's prices exactly at $1 here in Seattle with our 9.5% sales tax, they'd have to sell their products for 91 cents.

Right now I am more inclined to initially think round pricing is cheaper. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because dive places to eat price that way (tax included) and I've been buying stuff on craiglist...

Just goes to show if everybody goes one way long enough, going back is revolutionary!

Maybe on lower priced items, but I still think people are more attracted to 14,999 than 15,000 when buying big ticket items like cars and plasma TVs.

@Vandelay Import Export: then swap 'em out for fives once you get enough.

@Outrun1986: Maybe they are using price codes.

I think that we should get rid of the penny as a unit of currency altogether, and just round every transaction up to the nearest $.05. It would get rid of clutter, remove the cost of producing pennies at the mint, and make some point-of-sale cash transactions faster because the worker wouldn't have to count as much change.

@johnmc: What about $1 bills? Then you don't need a certain amount!

@durkzilla: It doesn't seem to be anything like that, it seems more like they are trying to obscure the fact that they are adding a few cents to each item every week. Its not like all cereals end in a 7, it seems to be very, very random.

They should just start showing the price with tax.

@mbz32190: The corner store prices their 24 oz beers at $2.31 so the price comes out to $2.50 with tax. There is a use for algebra.

@elangomatt: I had the opposite experience at the Apple store. I kept referring to the computer as the $1700 Macbook Pro and they kept referring to it as $1699. After about three go-arounds it got pretty annoying.

I don't mind retailers doing it. What I absolutely HATE is having a conversation with my wife about the price of something, and I round the price to, say, "two dollars" and she always says "one ninety-nine" or "one seventy-nine".

@Griff: Then they *should* advertise it as "$1 including tax".

@milkcake: *LOUD APPLAUSE*

@jeremymiles: That wouldn't explain the practice in the US, as a few percent sales tax is added on after the price of the item, so you won't be paying an even dollar amount anyway.

A small portion of the stuff at Walgreens is priced in even dollar amounts. They have yellow stickers on them that say "WOW!" and the price.

@mbz32190: i always find it amusing that the AMC on the NH/MA border includes tax with the concession prices, whereas the cinemagic in NH DOES NOT include tax. perhaps the concession prices are more expensive than the folks with the meals tax included in MA, which is possible because the meals tax is a nice 9% up here.

Until sales tax is gotten rid of, it is really doesn't matter all that much

@milkcake: there are some places that do this...mainly places where you know you're going to buy something, like movie theater concessions, theme park gift shops. i think the rest of the retailers are unlikely to though, because it might dissuade you from buying your wants. I had my laptop shipped to my mom's school in NH so I wouldn't have to pay NY sales tax on it. yes it was going to be used in NY (for all of 2 months), but I'm a NH resident, why should I pay nearly 10% extra?

@Vandelay Import Export: Pound coins are very satisfying to hold and use. I wish the US would start using a one dollar coin to replace one dollar bills.

I'm really quite surprised that nobody has mentioned that Wal-Mart moved to even-dollar pricing some time ago, for basically this exact reason (customers aren't fooled, and they appreciate the easier math).

But then again, this is consumerist, so maybe there aren't a lot of people who have been in Wal-Mart for a while. ;-)

@Christovir: There are dollar coins, but no one uses them. I know some people keep the dollar coins, effectively taking them out of circulation.

@NumberFourtyThree:
Actually, jeremymiles is correct.
JC Penney, the man who started the store did that to force his clerks to write out receipts & make change. That was long before sales taxes.
Before that, he suspected them of stealing from him.

All of the prices at the pizza place ended in $.99 and WITHOUT fail people would drop the 99 and just go with the front number. Example conversation:

Me: The special is $11.99.
Customer: Honey, it's 11 bucks for a pizza, what do you think?
*spouse nods agreement*
Me: Okay, your total is $12.96.
Customer: Why is it almost 3 dollars more!!! That isn't all tax is it?
*heaves sigh*

For whatever reason, they could see the end amount but not the beginning amount. I STILL don't understand it.

Of course, all of the stores would make 1 more cent on each item.

Not a big deal to you? I once worked at a small business with prices that ended .95. We changed to .99 pricing and made about $15,000 more on just that in one year.

Anyway, if you read pricing research, the 9 trick only has a real impact on buying if it changes the digit that is farthest to the left. For example, $29.99 makes a big difference compared to $30, but $22.99 makes almost no difference compared to $23.00.

@Grabraham: I forgot about the gas pumps. 9/10ths of a penny is even dumber than doing the .99 thing on prices. I really hate it too when I am talking about gas prices, I always round up a tenth of a cent to the nearing penny. Some people (like my mother), ask "Oh is it really $2.65 a gallon, or is it $2.649 a gallon?"

@AlexPDL: It's not as if it's a recent phenomenon. Dad remembered things for £1/19/11-3⁄4d. (that's one pound 19 shillings 11 pence and 3 farthings; the smallest coin short of a whole two pounds) from the mid 1920s.

More to the point - why would a whole number be more of a "realistic" deal than £1.62 or any other number?