Buying things over here is much easier than in the States. The reason being that all tax is included in listed prices. If that toaster is listed as being 39.99 Euro, that’s what you pay. There is no tax added on. As such, most of their prices tend to end in a 5 or 0, just to keep change simple. Every now and then you do go to a place where you bill ends up as 6.72 or something. There are pennies to cover that situation, but today I discovered a different tactic.
I was looking at my receipt from a recent purchase (that I did all by myself), and saw this line:
abgerundet -0,02
Naturally, I had to look up what “abgerundet” meant. I guess it means “rounded”. This makes sense, since without that 0,02 (notice how they use a comma instead of a period for cents), the bill was 6,70. Neat, huh?
Holy! That is awesome! I have always wondered why we are not more forthcoming with our charges here. That rounding thing though, holy goodness, that is quite neat and something we probably will never see here.