MoneySaving Poll: Is it time to ditch 1p and 2p coins?

Stevie_Palimo

takman wrote: »

Personally I think all prices that are 99p, £1.99 etc should be rounded up to the nearest £1 because having lots of 1 and 2 penny's takes up a lot of room for little value. Obviously when paying by card this doesn't matter which I do as much as possible.

But you can't get rid of them because thousands of 2p machines in arcades will become unusable!.

Not really they amend them to a 5p one and change the coin entry system and display to suit this.


Also I cannot see anybody that would be desperate if they were got rid of I mean seriously 1p and 2p what good are they ?? , All they do is clutter up space and to be honest probably costs more to produce them than what they are worth.

XRAT

Prices will be rounded up because shops are there to make a profit. That's fine if one is only purchasing a single item, but if buying a basket full.., or a trolley of items which are all rounded up..., disaster!
Keep the coins and leave a bucket at the tills, let those who don't want them ditch them, and let moneysavers keep theirs.


That said, I wouldn't mind if they rounded prices up a whole 0.1p per litre at the petrol pumps to a round penny!

Devon_Home_Girl

Wish there had been a choice to just ditch the 1p. That's the coin I never use!

jdeets84

Having spent 2 years in Australia where they use the same system I would be glad to see it adopted. Individual items are still priced the same but the rounding occurs to the total amount purchased and can be rounded both up and down depending on final cost. Also, it only applies to cash purchases there with card payments still taken for the exact amount....

Final totals ending with 3p or 4p ROUNDED UP to 5p
Final totals ending with 8p or 9p ROUNDED UP to 10p
Final totals ending with 1p or 2p ROUNDED DOWN to 0p
Final totals ending with 6p or 7p ROUNDED DOWN to 5p
No rounding necessary if shopping total ends with 0p, 5p, 10p, etc

Examples:
3 items: 99p, 99p, 90p = TOTAL: £2.88 = ROUND UP to £2.90
3 items: 99p, 99p, 89p = TOTAL: £1.87 = ROUND DOWN to £1.85

...and it also gives you the opportunity to benefit to track/split purchases to always round down each time you shop

BobbinAlong

When the halfpenny was scrapped all the prices rose to the nearest 1p above so the same would happen again. And there's the cost of converting machines that do take them which would be passed on to the consumer.
And it would be the demise of the cheap sweets (yes there are still some) - remember when we used to get 8 blackjacks for 1d and how we'd work out the combinations of sweets we could get for our 1d or 2d?

jackieblack

jdeets84 wrote: »

3 items: 99p, 99p, 89p = TOTAL: £1.87 = ROUND DOWN to £1.85

Bargain!

dw1

BobbinAlong wrote: »

it would be the demise of the cheap sweets (yes there are still some)

I'd love to know where you managed to find individually priced sweets, and how that shop manages to make a profit...

I'm 27 and can't remember a time that 1p and 2p coins were EVER any use to me. They were useless 20+ years ago and still are.

maiasopohie

Australia did this a long time ago (felt rather embarrassed at the til saying I didn't get my change on a bar of chocolate!) the advertised price is always rounded up!

dachse

jdeets84 wrote: »

Examples:
3 items: 99p, 99p, 90p = TOTAL: £2.88 = ROUND UP to £2.90
3 items: 99p, 99p, 89p = TOTAL: £1.87 = ROUND DOWN to £1.85

...and it also gives you the opportunity to benefit to track/split purchases to always round down each time you shop

I think you over did the rounding down. Actually in your example it should be: total £2.87 rounded down to £2.85.

What a messy solution. Personally I'd rather we just ditched the coppers and I don't think that everything would get rounded up. More likely to be rounded down to the .95 to still make you think it is cheaper than it really is.

Anyway honestly guys if everything priced at .99 was rounded to the full pound (+1p) it is so insignificant that it wouldn't even have any effect on inflation. Get real.:rotfl:

Olliegami

I've just spent 9 months in Australia, where their smallest denomination is 5c.

Now, 5c is simply viewed as shrapnel. In an economy like ours, where for so many people, myself included, every penny counts - this is not the way forward.

If 1 & 2 pence pieces are put out of circulation and prices are rounded to the nearest 5p, then it won't be long until we begin to wonder whether 5 pence pieces are 'useless' and 'obsolete'. This is a move toward an entirely digital economy, one that does not benefit the people who are on the bottom-most rungs in our society.

I will always be a collector of coins tossed & forgotten on the floor. Whether I am who I am now, struggling to make ends meet to put the money toward my debts, or if I earn triple figures - it's money which would be donated to people to still value money for the very thing that it is.

At the end of the day sometimes having a penny in your pocket, more or less than the cost of something - can mean the difference between buying it and having to forgo it. In the case of food, and basics - this is a bigger issue than the people making these kinds of decisions will ever understand.