"Andy" > wrote in message ...
> OT: Aren't you tired of pennies as currency?
>
> Along time ago Australia did away with pennies.
>
> Are you tired of them in America?
>
> I yam!
>
Used to be one could put pennies in a bus farebox, but now the newer ones
don't accept pennies and the transit agencies using those newer fareboxes
even have in their rider guide about not accepting pennies. Used to be one
could use pennies to buy a single stamp at a post office stamp vending
machine, but now the stamp vending machines are replaced in the post offices
by automated postal centers that only accept credit or debit cards and only
sell stamps by the whole sheet of 18. That's only a couple of examples, of
course.

At least the Coinstar and similar types of machines will still accept them,
but also for a fee a few cents per dollar.

A lot of the problem is the prices ending in cents values that often do not
round evenly to the nearest 5 cents or 10 cents after tax, such as .99, .98,
..78 or .87. Something that costs $4.99 with an 8.75% sales tax added to it
gets .44 cents added to it, which ends up with a price of $5.43. The
resultant change is going to end up having pennies since the coin amount
returned is 57 cents. (Pay $6 cash and get 57 cents back, pay with a $10
bill and get $4.57 back, and so on.)

In article >,
"Daniel W. Rouse Jr." > wrote:


> A lot of the problem is the prices ending in cents values that often do not
> round evenly to the nearest 5 cents or 10 cents after tax, such as .99, .98,
> .78 or .87. Something that costs $4.99 with an 8.75% sales tax added to it
> gets .44 cents added to it, which ends up with a price of $5.43. The
> resultant change is going to end up having pennies since the coin amount
> returned is 57 cents. (Pay $6 cash and get 57 cents back, pay with a $10
> bill and get $4.57 back, and so on.)

That's the biggest non-problem I've seen yet today, completely dwarfed
by the problem of which pair of shoes to put on to go on my walk in a
minute!

The actual amount due in the example above is US$5.426625, and somebody
just rounded it up to $5.43. If there were no pennies, then it would
just be rounded up to $5.45 instead.

--
Dan Abel
Petaluma, California USA