• @[email protected]
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    9 days ago

    You can pick up a coffee mug with a $9.99 price tag, then be asked to pay $10.74 at the register. The German mind cannot comprehend this

        • @[email protected]
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          179 days ago

          None of these a reasons the store, which posts it’s own prices and barcodes, can’t just include the total on the tag, or better yet set the price to the nearest whole number (or division of .10/.25) and take the tax out of that full amount. I know because I live in the midwest, I worked in retail/grocery store and our store piloted a test program of doing exactly that. Customers were incredibly happy and our overall sales actual went up because people who didn’t normally shop with us started to because it was easier to budget.

          We got shut down by corporate beancounters who were freaking out because we were supposedly making less money. Except our sales and profits were up for the 8 weeks we demo’d the program and 4 weeks after we were forced to stop sales dropped below our year-on-year average. Literally forced to stop a program that benefited the customer and retailer because corporate greed couldn’t tolerate the customer not being screwed.

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            17 days ago

            This is why being autistic feels like being from outer space. Everyone around me seems either utterly incompetent (decision makers) or fucking complacent (everyone going along with this bullshit).

            Can we get some adults in charge who make decisions based on sense and data instead of greed and vibes?

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              48 days ago

              But the point is the same right? Whether you call them countries or states or counties or municipalities, there are multiple levels of government with their own distinct tax structures, but Europe has no problem displaying the final sale price on their tags. Why would this be harder to implement in the US than in Europe?

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              169 days ago

              Prices tags are normally prepared using computers which are famously good at maths. Here in the UK, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland have different rules for tax on certain products and yet everything is advertised with the final price.

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                59 days ago

                I would love tax-included pricing (or maybe VAT?), though from what I know:

                TV ads, sponsorship spots, circulars all complicate this.

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                  18 days ago

                  TV ads usually don’t mention pricing for national brands. Local ads like circulars are generally for just one store anyway. All of this would be low effort to do. The only reason they don’t is it tricks people into spending more than they want.

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                  8 days ago

                  Prices are printed on packaging for many things too, books, magazines, bags of potatoe chips.

                  So then stores would have to cover the manufacturer price with a higher one just in their store. Which is a waste of time and material if you can just condition a population to ignore the price jump at the register.

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      289 days ago

      Not only can Americans comprehend it, they actively choose for it to be this way. Macys tried to switch to straight forward pricing and it did not go well for them so they switched back to their bs sales.

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        9 days ago

        Imo it would only work here if everyone does it at the same time and if it’s implemented by legislation enforcing it. If one company does it, their competitors can take advantage of the perceived differences.

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          28 days ago

          They could also first have both prices and slowly make the “before taxes” less noticeable over years

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      229 days ago

      I stopped off in Oregon once for some McDonald’s. My total ended up being $8.00 exactly and I let out a little smile and told the cashier ‘wow perfect, what are the chances’

      She looked at me like I was an idiot, and I learned some things about Oregon that day.

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      59 days ago

      A lot of germany has deposits actually, so an extra 25-50 cents on top for cans and glass bottles

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        49 days ago

        Which are only added in fine print on the price tag usually. But it’s more like 8-25 cents for cans, most plastic bottles, and some glass bottles.