Letter: Pennies fight fraud
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Sir: Mr Ashley (letter, 11 August) might reflect that the practice of pricing goods at pounds 19.99 or whatever is adopted by very many non-grocery retailers employing large numbers of staff.
It might seem irksome, but it saves more than pence by making cheques, credit card vouchers and the like far harder to alter or misrepresent, as well as by making more complex frauds more difficult to commit since round figures seldom appear in till rolls or in records derived from them.
Obviously a cheque for pounds x.99 in the possession of anyone but a shopkeeper would be hard to explain, and obviously it is very difficult to tinker with sets of figures that are built up of units of pounds x.99, yet their analysis is made easier if pence are only ever shown in multiples of 99, when an error is being sought. Since the costs of both fraud and book-keeping are passed on to shoppers anything that limits either must be of benefit.
Prices have in any case to be marked up by odd percentages to cover the costs incurred by those who use credit cards, so the round-pound prices in Mr Ashley's dream shop are likely to have been rounded up more than those in the shops he dislikes.
NICHOLAS Du QUESNE BIRD
Bath
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments