While the government recommended stores round down transactions ending in 1c and 2c and round up transactions ending in 3c and 4c , some stores are trying to make things fairer by rounding down all (cash) transactions.
The stores that round down are:
Home Depot
Giant Tiger
All Loblaws stores (Atlantic Superstore, Extra Foods, Fortinos, Loblaws, Maxi, No Frills, RCSS, Independent, Zehrs and other Loblaws stores)
Do you know of other stores who will round all transactions down?
Hot Canada Deals
Smart Canucks is Canada's first Canadian shopping deals blog and has been operating since 2005!
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. SmartCanucks.ca is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to products on Amazon.com. Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc, or its affiliates.
maxi in QC will be rounding down!
Shoppers Drug mart also does this 😉
Really Krysten? mine rounded up yesterday
Total $6.24
Change Due $3.76
Rounded Change: $3.75
as an aside note: McDonald’s is rounding both UP and DOWN… but here’s an experience I had…
The price on two coffees came to $3.73 at the drive-thru. The cashier automatically rounded up to $3.75 BEFORE determining how I was going to pay, or if I might have exact change.
Shouldn’t the rounding only come to pass if exact payment is not possible? — keeping in mind that electronic payments are exact-payment options. It’s only cash transactions, when pennies are not handled, that need to be rounded off.
And with the billions of pennies in circulation, it could take a while before people are “penniless” so to speak.
Had it rounded out today at Buy-Low,saved 3 cents..
Let the confusion begin… and there is confusion, because retailers are actually doing it “wrong”.
The key problem is that the price the customer pays isn’t the portion that is supposed to be rounded off. The amount returned in CHANGE is what is to be rounded off. Granted, the difference is exactly the same. For example: if the final cost is 1.74 and I pay with a toonie, I’ll get 25c back. But it should be because 26c in return change was rounded down to 25c, not because the cost of $1.74 was rounded up to $1.75. (and some of you are scratching your heads muttering “huh?? Isn’t that the same thing?” — The math is the same, but it’s semantically different… here’s why… )
The final tally what it costs me, and my choice of tender doesn’t effect the price itself… If the final cost is $1.74 that’s what I’m expected to pay. If I use credit, debit, gift card, cheque… OR ‘exact’ cash… the cost is $1.74. and if I pay with electronic payment, that’s that I’d pay… or if I have exact cash.
If the final price is $1.71 — and I only have $1.70 … then I can’t afford the item. End of story (of course most retailers wouldn’t care — as they normally wouldn’t before this began.) — but if I paid with a toonie, then I would get 30c in change.
Everyone (retailers and customer alike) have missed one key point here:
The penny is STILL LEGAL TENDER — even if it’s not being minted anymore, retailers are OBLIGATED to accept them as legal tender. So changing the price before it’s determined how the customer is going to pay is the wrong move.
Customers are the ones who are told not to expect pennies in return from the retailer… thus it is the RETURN amount, the retailer’s portion of the transaction, that is rounded off. If the retailer is returning nothing to the customer, then it doesn’t affect the final cost whatsoever.
To be just, it isn’t fairer to round everything down.
We have always round up and down to the cent before. i.e. if you buy something at 99 cent with 13% tax. it is supposed to be $1.1187, but we pay $1.12 instead of $1.11. It has always been like this, it’s how mathematics works. We are just using a different unit. You lose some one day, you gain some another day. I really don’t understand why people are making a big deal out of this.
Shopped at Superstore yesterday and saw signs about how they were rounding down. I paid with credit though so it didn’t effect me. I think I might start being cheap and pay with cash when I’m gonna round down and pay with credit when I’m gonna round up 😉
Good points, bhlombardy!
Fyi, I was a a Loblaw’s store yesterday and they rounded up, not down.
Silk
Silk, someone else mentioned this on facebook. You should contact them as they are advertising rounding down
I was actually denied using pennies on Monday because they claimed they weren’t legally allowed to accept them anymore…Funny thing was I got a penny back in my change from the person who told me it wasn’t legal tender…Yep let the mass confusion begin…
Chapters will not be rounding in any way. They have all stocked up on pennies so the price will be what it is. If you don’t want your pennie(s) back they will donate it to charity.
“If the final price is $1.71 — and I only have $1.70 … then I can’t afford the item. End of story (of course most retailers wouldn’t care — as they normally wouldn’t before this began.) — but if I paid with a toonie, then I would get 30c in change.”
If you are in the above scenario at Chapters and you don’t have a penny, you will just have to pay more (like any normal time) and get the pennies back in change. They will change this in the future, but not for a while.
There is NO law that tells retailers how to handle the penny issue. Just guidelines. So this is really going to be confusing as to how each store is dealing with it.
I know someone mentioned that Shoppers Drug Mart does this but in QC, Pharmaprix isnt doing it. I bought a few things recently and it rounded up as the gouv suggested for 3c and 4c.
It may just be that store Parisa, I am in Ontario and they didn’t
I do not think this is a big deal!!! You lose a few pennies, you gain a few pennies! It is not like breaking the freakin bank!! Most of you complainers probably waste money in other ways and do not think twice about it!!
Bought coffee at McDonalds the other day. My change was .23 cents and she gave me back a quarter.
I can see some people going completely psycho if they are owed .22 cents and a store only gives them back .20. I pity the poor cashiers.
Noticed that Dollarama was still giving back pennies when I thought they could only now accept them??
“Noticed that Dollarama was still giving back pennies when I thought they could only now accept them??”
As MommaK said, there is NO law stating how retailers handle the penny. There is NO law stating that they must not give them to customers.
The goal here isn’t to take them out of circulation and make them extinct entirely. The goal here is to eliminate the cost of minting them. The apparent result, however, is that they will be less widely available as time goes on.
That’s why the ‘guidelines’ exist on how customers and retailers should expect a transaction to be handled if pennies are not available. The addition to this guideline is that the retailer is no longer “required” to give pennies in return as change. They can if they want to – provided that they make it a fair practice (ie: if they round off, then they must do it both ways, not only when it benefits them) and treat all customers the same.
What a **cking joke! This is another way for the government to bleed more money out of people by making them pay more and also collecting the extra $60 billion dollars worth of pennies for themselves.
I heard a great suggestion (forget who said it) come from a government official on the news – everyone should donate their pennies to one of the many worthy charities. Some of that $6billion worth of pennies lying around could go to great causes and then we get them out of circulation and on with our lives 🙂
I agree with Koe and Adora … so not a big deal. Bigger things to worry about. You will gain a couple of cents today, lose a couple tomorrow … unless you get sly about it like Kary and pay with debit when it benefits you and cash when it benefits you!
I wasa t mcdonalds today my total ended in .02 they rounded up!
today I had a store refusing to take some pennies and then went to the bakery to get some home made bread and they said they had to put the price up per loaf because if the penny drop, can you imagine
Got pennies back from Walmart today. When I asked, they said they’d keep using them until June. I don’t think stores will be able to get pennies from the bank anymore, so eventually, the supply will dwindle.
Frankly, any store that rounds up incorrectly risks losing customers over a few pennies. If a store rounds every transaction down, it would encourage some people to pay cash and the store avoids interac or credit card fees which would be significantly more than $0.04.
My Zehrs said they will be rounding up—even 1 cent will go to 5 cents. Doesn’t seem fair and they will make a lot of money off all those roundups. They uppped my 1 cent to 5.
Those who are finding their local Loblaws is rounding up transactions (they should round up change since they are rounding down transactions) should contact Loblaws bc they are campaigning about rounding down
McDonalds in Toronto rounded up from $1.77 to $1.80….
only 3 cents, but is irking as its McDonalds and they got signs up about it.
I’ve noticed some stores round up non-cash transactions as well, which they are not suppose to do! I’ve noticed it for my NOFRILLS store, as well as for Chuck E Cheese!
Wonder who I should talk to about it
Valu-Mart at Woodbine and Danforth in Toronto is rounding down all cash transactions.
We were at Winners at Gerrard Square yesterday (August 20/13) and we were given change WITH pennies. When I inquired, was told that their software is having issues, and they are still using pennies (until the penny stock is depleted, according to the clerk…quietly).