MoneySaving Poll: When your change is just pennies do you bother taking it?

justniel1

I recently had a doo in Card Factory because i bought a card for £1.99.
I gave her £2 she gave me my card and shut the till.
so i stood and she looked at me I said im waiting for my change. She said its only 1p
I said yes i know so she tutted and said well il have to go and find one. I replied its ok i can wait. After rummaging around behind the counter looking for me a customer at the next till said to me Well she has just done it to me.
So if they keep 1p from every card they sell "pennies make pounds" So mad over her attitude i emailed their hesd office who assured me it wasnt their policy and would investigate But did also send me a nice selection of cards as compensation. So Thanks Card Factory.

marleyboy

If there is a charity box on the counter, the pennies go in it. Failing this I take it home and put it into the copper jar, nowadays Coinstar ensure its as easy to spend.

Murphybear

I put coppers into the black and white cow bank. It will get emptied every so often and paid into the bank. 5-50 p coins go in the car to pay for parking.

caronoel

Interesting that so many of the younger age groups dont take their change.

Between that and queuing up to pay over the odds for the latest iPads and running shoes, its small wonder that so many of them claim they "can't" save for a house deposit!

jinty271

The 1,2, and 5ps go in a wee tub on the window sill and get given to the guy at work who is always collecting for some kind of charity or other.

When we got a thank you email saying that our £15 odds had given a meal and education for 5 kids for the month, we got choked and started chucking in 10ps too.

But no, I would never chuck them away.

Hedgehog99

That 1p could be the difference between getting home and not getting home if you need a ticket or to pay for parking. Or the difference between eating/not eating if you pop into the shop on the way home & realise you've forgotten your card, so all you have is the change about your person.

My purse has two compartments in the coin section, so I keep coppers and 5p one side, the rest the other because 5p and less can't be used in parking machines & coppers can't go in rail ticket machines*.

When I have built up 10p, I combine it with £1 to get my TV mag and pay at a self-service till so the staff don't have to faff about counting it.

The "roadkill" where I live is pretty slim pickings, so maybe we're thriftier with our change, or are just wary of pickpockets so make sure our money is put away before we leave the shop. So far this month, I've found 1p!

* I once had the exact change for my rail fare, including 20p of coppers. IIRC, you can hand over 20p-worth of copper in shops anyway. The train ticket machine spat out all my coppers, so I had to go to the human being counter. He said "We're not a dumping ground for your change y'know", despite having watched me try to pay at the machine first. If it's coin of the realm, machines should accept it.

Honey_Bear

We let a couple of rooms by the week to people connected with a couple of professions. There's a growing frequency when I clean a room to find a pile of copper left behind, but only after someone under 30 has stayed - and it's not all of them. The last time, it was exactly 50p, all neatly stacked up. Fine by me!

hgotsparkle

If theres a charity put near by then I'll stick it in that, if not then it goes in my purse to be put in the change pot at home.
Working in retail, I know how annoying it can be when someone says 'keep the change' as it throws my till out and I need to put through a difference that goes against my name.

Hoipolloi

1p, 2p, 5p coins often go in the charity donation box. Depends how skint I am though.

Contains_Mild_Peril

hgotsparkle wrote: »

If theres a charity put near by then I'll stick it in that, if not then it goes in my purse to be put in the change pot at home.
Working in retail, I know how annoying it can be when someone says 'keep the change' as it throws my till out and I need to put through a difference that goes against my name.

Would it be worth asking the boss to put a charity box at the till for unclaimed change? I volunteer in a charity shop and it's quite common for customers to tell us to keep the change, which gets taken from the till just us if we were giving it to the customer, and we then put it in the donations box.
One of the things I dislike about buses insisting on exact change is I think they probably cost charities a lot of money because people save their small change to ensure they have the right change for the bus, whereas otherwise, some of those coins might have gone into charity boxes at shop tills.