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Comment by mynameisbob | Hacker News Reader

I was in Belgium the week the Belgian franc converted to Euros. I saw no price changes other than rounding up or down to the nearest Euro equivalent price. If memory serves some stores showed prices in both denominations for a while which would not have allowed for stealth inflation to happen.

The currencies were pegged for a period before then so other than niche cases there really weren’t opportunities for massive price increases.

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Did not happen in Germany either. Inflation and price hikes came but later. And had nothing to do with currency system but were overdue price adjustments or greed of companies.

I remember the rounding up in Germany. But that was the extent of it. It was a one time event and wasn't difficult to absorb.

> I saw no price changes other than rounding up or down to the nearest Euro equivalent price

Dunno about Belgium but what I notice in French supermarkets is that prices aren’t rounded at all. 10k SKUs will have 10k different prices (ish).

Plain frozen pizza? 4,62 EUR.

Same with pepperoni? 4,92 EUR

Domestic 500mL beer? 1,14 EUR

Fancier beer? 1,81 EUR

Plain frozen pizza? gesticulates annoyed in Italian ;-)

Belgium had double denominations for about two years. My mother owned a business at that time and she used the occasion to correct the prices a bit bit that was only because she lagged a bit on inflation.

I’m Belgian. This is correct. Even now, some people here still convert euros to francs to get a grasp on the value.

This feels odd to me. The only people I can really see doing this is ones that were 70+ when the Euro was introduced.

I did that a while ago and stopped immediately because it's scary and irrelevant. My parents house was wrote expensive at the rule they bought it at 600.000 Bfr. Now it's being valued at 600.000 euros. That's a factor 40 over about 30 years. When euro landed a beer cost about 45 Bfr, a bit over a euro. Now I pay €2,5. It's hard to compare prices over that period of time.

40,3399 BEF

They really hammered this in. It was even a question on my exams.

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