Removing decimals charges the change?

[swamyg1]

I'm having a problem after removing the decimals from my prices to make them nice round numbers. Everything looks good all the way through until I receive my merchant email receipt from Authorize.net.

To set it up I did this:

1. I went into: admin panel/ localization / currencies
2. I selected USD then clicked Edit. In Decimal Places field I changed 2 to 0.

Everything displays without the decimal to give me nice and clean numbers, even on the Zen Cart order receipts... But when I get my merchant receipt I see that the actual amount with change has been charged. For example, instead of $32, I see $32.40 in the actual charge amount.

Any idea why this would be happening?

[joejoejoe]

All you changed was the display price. The actual price is still whatever you put when you entered the product.

[swamyg1]

I see... Ok so I would need to change all of the product pricing and attributes... Man I wish there was an easier way!

[joejoejoe]

If you surf through all the similar threads you might find someone who has found a solution. I'm guessing that it would take some code to go into that table in the db and truncate every entry somehow - a solution that is way over my head.

[DrByte]

So what's the business logic behind all of this?
It's rare, especially for a North American store, for purchases to be rounded to the nearest dollar. Hence the questions. Can you explain why you're wanting to do this?

[swamyg1]

It's more of a style and brand thing than anything else... Currently all our prices are .05 short of a dollar like 39.95. I did it for marketing reasons, to make it sound cheaper than $40, but I think that logic may be old school... At least in my opinion it is. If you take off the change it makes it a much more simple number, 3 digits as opposed to 5. Plus it makes it easy on everybody from a mathematics perspective.

I see more and more stores doing this nowadays, it's attractive imo.

[swamyg1]

So I've noticed a problem when doing this... Even if I take out the decimals, what happens when we have a 15% sale on an item that costs $110?

This would make the product price $93.50... Which would also show on the customer email receipt and in Authorize.net. It seems there is no way around this?

Is there???

[RodG]

I did it for marketing reasons, to make it sound cheaper than $40, but I think that logic may be old school...

Although it may be old school logic, it STILL WORKS (which is why you still see it almost everywhere).

Please don't ask me *why* it works (I've never really understood it myself because I always mentally round up anyway), but my wife is a classic example where it does work. Time and time again she'll see a product advertised for (say) $39.95, yet when she tells me about it the price is 'a bit over $30' (rather than just under $40). Seriously, that 5cents difference in actual cost can amount to ~$10 in perceived cost.

People are weird.

Cheers
Rod

[stevesh]

And people will still cross the street to buy gasoline from a station which advertises a price of $3.98.9 rather than buy it at $3.99.

[swamyg1]

I've decided to go with prices like $39, $49, etc. I think this does what I'm trying to do while still using old fashioned marketing tactics.

Now the problem I'm running into is that If I change the decimal to 0 in currencies, I still have the authorize.net problem when we have sales on our site.

For example, a 15% sale on a $39 makes the product $33.15 which authorize.net will charge even if the price displays $33 on my site. I cannot have it show one thing on my site, and charge customers another... Is there any way around this?

The only thing I can think of is hiding the decimals if .00 on product pages and listing pages.... But not on the checkout page. This thread shows how to do it on attributes, but does anybody know how to do it on the product and listing pages?