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Comment by normie3000 | Hacker News Reader

Worse than that.

Coffee usually _is_ a round number in my experience, and I know of people who aim for round numbers when filling their car, and of fuel stations which require a pre-set value, often 10, 20, 50€ etc

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Yes, as your parent comment points out, the article centers itself on US transactions, where listed prices seldom include tax and are frequently a cent below a round number. For example, the menu says a dish is $15.00 but the restaurant charges $18.83 after tax and tip. Globally, there's no doubt the US is the exception rather than the norm.

That sounds reasonable for some states but 5 states have no sales tax and many states have exclusions to sales tax. Many of those are also likely to have rural areas where small businesses like to use even amounts.

All of that is easy to account for, all of the metadata you need is available. This also applies to the sibling comment about rounding up to charity at the grocery store, the data is all there, even if it's e.g. the fraud analyst at the bank or credit card company instead of the fraud analyst at the grocery store.

I don't need to account for it - I'm just stating that this doesn't match my experience:

> Real cardholders almost never buy something for exactly $1.00. Coffee is $4.73, gas is $52.81. The roundness is the signal.

The article is about the US and your example uses Euros, so I don’t think your experience applies here.

I’ve always fancied landing on a round number at the pump, kind of a little game I play lol. Glad it’s never set off any alarm bells for my bank

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