To think 1p and 2p pieces need to be taken out of circulation

[VintageEbonyGold]

Just that, they're almost useless and the banks get hoiky judgy pants if you take in more than £5 worth.

What's with that anyway, you spend months digging the buggers out of the sofa, then months counting them out into the correct piles and then some one spoils all the fun of watching them all being weighed by moaning about it.

Sods.

[MrSunshine]

Works fine is Australia, everything is rounded up or down.

[LineRunner]

I was wittering about Coinstar machines last month and someone pointed out that larger branches of banks now have coin counting machines.

Straight into your bank account - no extra charge.

[Startailoforangeandgold]

How else would you draw Pudsey if you didn't have coppers.

Mind the PTA treasurer drew the short straw of counting schools children in need donation and she was not a impressed with how long they took to sort.

[TheBonkeyMollocks]

I get strangley ecstatic when I court up all my copper and take £30+ to the bank.

Keep um!

[IvanaNap]

It devalues the currency, imo, so YABU.
I can't quite accurately describe why or how it does so, though

[somedayma]

YABU. I bloody love sorting coppers into bags of REAL MONEY. V satisfying

[AdoraBell]

YABU The fact that you find them almost worthless doesn't matter to the millions of people who use them. Here in Chile we get around 800 pesos to the pound, varies daily. The 1 and 2 peso coins are much smaller than a British penny and worth much less, but people still use them.

[differentnameforthis]

It does work fine here, in principal but think of all the extra pennies you spend by having it rounded up! So say, a bill of 9.97 gets rounded to 10.00. Those 3c make a difference when it is one every bill you ever pay!

We avoid most of it because we often pay by car, so no rounding needed. But pensioners etc who pay with real money are out of pocket time & again. It doesn't sound a lot at, but it adds up!

[differentnameforthis]

*on every bill

[SomersetONeil]

We don't have 1 and 2c in NZ, but if you're paying by EFTPOS, debit/credit card, whatever, then you still pay $5.79, say. It's only when you pay cash that the amount is rounded up. Likewise, bills will be an exact amount; not rounded up. Money transferred electronically will be exact, just not cash transaction, IYSWIM?

In other words, you're not doing away with the actual numbers/digits - just the coins. And as people pay by cash less and less these days, it does mean you generally do end up paying the exact amount.

YANBU. Far less faff with fewer worthless small coins taking up space in one's wallet.

[McPhee]

No!

What would my pig eat

[NannyBeth]

different - 9.97 would be rounded down not up... 1, 2, 6 and 7 are rounded down to 0 or 5, and 3, 4, 8 and 9 are rounded up. They don't just round everything up! So it all evens out in the end!

[nannynick]

What would we give pre-schoolers to put in those charity boxes where you watch the coin roll round.

[BoomerGold]

Here in Sweden they have the 'ore' which is equivalent to 5p. The coins are no longer in circulation so at the checkout if you pay by cash the amount is rounded up or down. If you pay by card, the exact amount is deducted. I would much rather have the coins, I am picky like that, although I suppose over time it works out pretty much the same.

I wouldn't like to lose the pennies in the UK, purely because we'd be stuck with higher prices as you can bet something that's 97p won't be rounded down to 95p but up to £1.00.

I'm sure it will happen at some point soon, though, as does most currency in countries where the value of such small coins is reduced.

[HecateHarshPants]

Can I clarify? Are you saying 'taken out of circulation' as in no longer exist and therefore you cannot have any item price that ends in 1, 2, 3 or 4? Because if that's what you mean - God, can you imagine? Everything rounded up to the next 5p? because they would! They wouldn't round it down. Unless the government made them of course. I seriously cannot see retailers, energy companies, fuel companies saying ah yes, we'll take this .38 and round it down to .35!

Assuming your shop is 90 items, 40 of which are rounded up, by an average of 3p per item, that's £1.20 per shop, times 52 weeks a year, that's £62.40 a year.

And that's just your shopping. Your gas bill, electric bill, water bill, phone bill. Those texts that are 12p are now 15p, your petrol which was already a ridiculous £1.37 is now £1.40 and can only go up by 5p?

The other thing I thought you might mean is that they don't exist in cash, so if you pay in cash you lose however much in pence. But add that up from every transaction and it will end up being a lot! And who is more likely to pay in cash? - the poorest people.

[HecateHarshPants]

1, 2, 3, 4 or 6, 7, 8 or 9, that should read!

[kakapo]

We don't even have 5c now in NZ, 10c is the smallest. Works fine!

[MadonnaKebab]

Visitors have usually been in Aus for weeks, and paid for lots of things before I mention the lack of 1c & 2c coins, and they have never noticed.
The sums are so small as to be unnoticeable.

Something that is 97p would remain 97p.
If you paid by credit/debit card/Paypal/whatever it would still cost exactly 97p.
If you bought several things of various prices (or a whole supermarket trolley full) and paid cash the total would be rounded up or down by a maximum of 2p, not each item.
And it is equally likely to be up or down.

So the overall effect is zero unless you regularly buy the same single item, always on its own, with cash only , that has a price ending in 3,4,8 or 9.

In this unlikely circumstance one unlucky person might be worse off for a quid or two for every hundred times this single cash item is paid for , while another person whose regular cash single purchase amount ended in 1,2,6 or7 would be better off by the same amount.
Newspapers are priced in whole 5c's to avoid this.

In reality it makes no difference, except for less wear and tear on purse coin pockets!

[MadonnaKebab]

Yes retailers have to round down as well as up, by law.
And if they tried to avoid this by pricing things at ??.99 to be rounded up to ??+1, well a customer would only have to buy 3 items of Various figures ending in .99 for it to add up to something.97 which would automatically round down to something.95 cash, so the cash payer would be better off than the card payer 4/10 of the time , the card payer 4/10 of the time and neither (because the total ends in 0 or 5 2/10 of the time.
If a person was desperate to be 2c better off they could even choose the payment method depending on the total

[HecateHarshPants]

Ah, I see.

so who keeps the extra coins?

If, for example, your shopping comes to something .97 and you pay in cash - who keeps the 3p?

cos that's going to add up to a very substantial amount, isn't it? add up everyone who pays cash x every transaction that they don't get a few pennies change for. Do the companies hand it over to the government, or pocket it?

[EndoplasmicReticulum]

Hecate - if your shopping came to something .97 it would be rounded down to .95 and you'd keep the 2p.

[EndoplasmicReticulum]

Although I would like to keep the coins, as I am sadly addicted to the 2p machines at the seaside.

[Tee2072]

My bank never complains, no matter how much copper I bring them.

Change banks?

I don't care if we keep 1p and 2ps or not. I rarely use cash anyway.

[shemademedoit]

But what about the 99p shops?

[HecateHarshPants]

really?

I seriously can't see tesco going for that unless forced to

[cynical]