Thanks wdupre, I was actually aware of the reasoning, I just wanted to have a hopefully humorous dig. Collecting 20 of pennies just from shop-change made me realise that I was being "taken for a ride" with the xx.99 pricing. It would be fair to say in the U.K. that the penny only exists for this reason as it is not possible to buy a single item that costs 1p. Even a penny-chew costs 5p. Retail psychology is fascinating, from the obvious use of certain specific people in ads, to the current trend of selling to empowered women by denegrating men in most TV ads. Recently at work we were made aware of a CAD package originally used for the design of Superstores, which calculated things like how to get customers into unpopular product areas by designing a flow to the popular stuff.