Fuel pricing

[searchlight]

Why is fuel priced to £*** .9p per litre and not rounded to the whole penny? I've often wondered

[puternut]

I guess its the old psychological thing of price

£399 is not quite £400 but we still see it as £300 plus

[factor-fiction]

And as we don't buy in exact litre blocks there is no reason to ever charge a full number of pence per litre. And as most people see 119.8 as being pretty much the same as 119.9 the garages never seem go to go for anything less than xxx.9p
In fact maybe one day someone may charge to 2 decimal places- e.g.119.89p in order to undercut a garage selling at 119.9p. Which begs the question why don't they charge say 119.99p.

[searchlight]

take your point factor30 but if i bought exactly 1 litre of fuel i would pay £1.20 wouldnt i yet its advertised at less than that

[searchlight]

historically many items in a shop were priced to xx.99p so that to give change the cashier would have to open the till by ringing in the amount to get the change

[factor-fiction]

I think that's pretty much an urban myth, searchlight, about why shops charge £9.99 etc.
The chances of buying an exact number of litres is very slim. What if you got 1.01 litres instead or 0.994 litres.
In practice they won't sell you an amount of only 1 litre. If you bought say 10 litres at 119.9p a litre it would result in a bill of £11.99 so there is no rounding issue.
Of course if you bought for example exactly 3.000 litres it would be interesting to see what they charge- I guess they wouldn't mind rounding down a part penny. In practice the machines perhaps work in full pence anyway.

[R1Geezer]

You can't buy exactly 1 litre, try it at the pump!

[R1Geezer]

you can't buy an exact amount of litres.

[factor-fiction]

I think you are right, RIGeezer. I think it's likely the fuel comes in 1 penny chunks. But as we are talking fractions of a penny each time we fill up I don't see it matters..