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.

ooooh, hark at QueenTee

If you shopped at a 99p shop you should always buy 3 items and make 2p profit, or pay by card and break even.

Thats probably why they are called dollar shops here!
Shops don't make a profit on it, the rounding-ups are exactly balanced out by the rounding-downs over time

You forgot to curtsey. Off with her head!

But Hecate has a point. If I buy something for 98p and pay with £1 the shop would keep the 2p. So what happens to it? Does the shop keep it? It would certainly add up over a year?

Yes but they'd lose out with rounding down and you keeping the change.

I have tried different branches and in the last 5years most won't take over a £5 in coppers and the supermarket coin sorters charge, so you lose out.

Most people pay by card so it wouldn't make a difference.

I agree with Hecate though that british shops would probably make it all round up though.

Hasn't M&S been doing this sort of thing in the UK for a while now? Clothing at £20 instead of 19.99

YANBU. With the price of metal being so high at the moment, they can then melt it, flog it off and do something useful with the proceeds

Oh yes. Of course it works both ways.

There would need to be legislation to force the rounding down.
Certainly possible to happen and works ok in other countries from what people are saying.
UK got rid of 1/2p so 1p and 2p could be next to go, and £5 coin circulated more... or are notes better? Remember the days of £1 notes?

What would happen to the 2p gambling machines at old seaside resorts!!

In sweden the lowest coin is the equivalent of a 10p and it works fine.

Switzerland doesn't have them any more, does it? It's so much better, not ending up with loads of coppers. No matter how much I try I still end up with a load of cents in europe

I'd like to see the back of them.

Oh I don't like the £5 coin idea - end up with too many coins, and they get heavy!

If you hoard coppers, planning to save them up & deposit them in bank later or can't be arsed to spend, then there are fewer in circulation which means the Bank of England has to waste money making more coins.

Then the shops have to PAY the banks to buy those bags of coppers so that they can hand them out (pay ?5-10% more than the value of coins). Shop can only recoup that expense by raising prices.

So anyone hoarding coppers or wasting them (I hear stories of them thrown in the bin ) costs the rest us money in several ways. That means YOU LOT.

I reckon that if coppers went that folk would start complaining about 5ps & 10ps being "nuisance" coins.

Obvious solution is for now on when someone gives you coppers in change, just hand it back. Or hand it to the next person in line, maybe they'd appreciate it them.

With price of scrap metal, though, it might be cost-effective to drop the smaller denomination coins.

I love collecting copper and 10 pences. We save them all and use them at the self service checkouts when we're skint.

Oops sorry lljkk

m.infobarrel.com/Home_Decorating_Ideas_DIY_Tiling_a_Floor_With_Pennies

makeprojects.com/Project/Install-a-Penny-Countertop/85/1

(Locally) Sainsbury self-check out is incredibly slow at processing coins, they obviously don't want people to dump piggy-bank contents in there.

Meanwhile Tesco whizzes right thru.

Same voice on both machines, so obviously central supermarket management policy is what different!

The shop keeps the 2p in Hair's example, but looses 2p if Hair buys something for 52p, They cant fix the prices to account for this because if Hair buys 2 x 98p items they loose 1p (1.96 rounded down to 1.95)r
So there really is no profit in it for them.
Only a customer who could be bothered to juggle cash or cards constantly based on total price could win, and it really would not be worth the bother

Yabu. I like saving up 1 and 2p pieces and we collect them all year round for the dc to spend in the summer holidays. It has been a great way of teaching them to save and budget.

Charities also make a lot of money in 1 and 2ps, I do quite a lot of banking for a charity I work with and our collection boxes raise quite a lot from people just dropping in their coppers. I'm sure a lot of charities would miss out on a lot of valuable revenue if they got rid of coppers.

Leave them alone!

Freddos
I expect that effect would be more than cancelled out by the fact that most people would give larger coins instead.
It would be interesting to see what the charities experienced in the UK the year the 1/2p was abolished, or the years that the 1c &2c coins went in Aus & NZ.

Yep it's tesco that I take all my crap to!

I'm not sure people would give larger coins instead though. Some people only give to charity to get rid of their annoying coppers. I know when I see a collector I will empty my purse of all the little coins if I like the charity, but I wouldn't start giving more money if I didn't have change available to give. I'd have to give nothing and just keep to my regular direct debit donations.

AUD NZD & CHF are worth less, in monetary terms, so not directly comparable.
Shops would/could easily change prices, to their advantage, re:rounding.
Charities a very interesting point too.

Our 2s and 1s gave us spending money for a weekend away last year we have a bottle we collect them takes a while though,
our bank just used the counting machine as long as it's bagged they weigh it and put it into your bank account, and I use them in shops too ,

What would I do if I wanted to buy a Blackjack?