Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The penny thing has been going on for what the
better part of a week now, with the US Treasury
or the US Mint no longer making any pennies and
a lot of stores freaking out about it and trying
to hoard pennies, which maybe we'll work for a little while.
But I've been reading in multiple places some very interesting
(00:20):
comments on all this by my next guest, Jeff Leonard,
is the vice president for Strategic Communications for the National
Association of Convenience Stores. And Jeff, if I understand your
position correctly, and I definitely don't want to put words
in your mouth, so you tell me what I got
right and what I got wrong, although I'm going to
(00:40):
keep it simple. You guys are fine with getting rid
of the penny, but not particularly.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Fine with just how it was done. Is that about right?
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And then let's elaborate on a little bit, especially on
the second part of that.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah, you captured it right.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
First off, our industry is pro customer, and for years
the customer has said, yeah, the penny, we don't really
care too much about it. It slows down transactions. We're about
fast transactions. But right now, because there is no congressional
congress needs to make these decisions, and with a shutdown,
(01:16):
you know there was delay and all that, but they
need to say that it is okay to round up
in round down. Without that, you know, retailers are faced
with you know a lot of bad decisions and you
know that complicates things for customers.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I hadn't thought about that aspect.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
So are you saying that somebody could potentially bring some
kind of lawsuit, like a like a class action lawsuit
for all the rounding up or something.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
What's the fear here?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
And doesn't rounding up and rounding down if we're talking
about rounding down, if with prices ending with six or seven,
and rounding up with prices ending with eight or nine,
wouldn't you think that just in terms of the the
aggregate impact on consumers, shouldn't it be a wash?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It should be a wash.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
And that's what has happened in Canada. Canada has been
doing this for more than a decade. Australia some other countries,
but it was a longer time frame. It was like
a year where they kind of had communications campaigns they
went out with that. This was a lot more sudden,
so yes, with potential lawsuits. As my lawyer friends say,
(02:20):
anybody can sue anybody. The question is, you know, will
it actually work? But there's complications that our industry faces
with things like gas prices. How do you set gas
prices if the price might be dropped, rounded up, rounded down?
Is that legalbates based on weights and measures? How does
(02:42):
this affect snaps? Snap spending the news a lot, But
with snap that is electronic payments, and they are supposed
to be those prices are supposed to be the same
for them as everybody else. But if just rounding up
and rounding down, there's not. So there's a lot of
uncertainty and a federal standard that says this is what's happening,
(03:07):
this is when it's happening, this is what you're allowed
to do. Can't sue somebody for this? That's what our
association is looking for and what our industry is looking for.
But then I'm sure customers have all kinds of questions.
What do I do with pennies? What do I do
with this? How will it work? So yeah, a lot
of questions to be answered, but you know we're on
the right path, I hope, Jeff.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
I want to look at this from the customer standpoint.
Real quick because you brought up gas prices, and to
be honest, I didn't even consider when we think about
the couple pennies short of gas prices because I'm always
putting gas on a card. And this might be like
a millennial mindset here, but I feel like we're in
a time where we're just becoming more and more of
a cash list society. So is the penny going away
(03:47):
really impacting businesses that much?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Do we still see.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
That many people paying with cash specific coins and the
exact dollars or are we seeing more and more people
just using cards and more and more business almost not
even accepting cash at times?
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Well, you have to accept cash, there's certain certain states,
certain statutes you have to accept it. But about four
percent of the population of households out there are what's
called unbanked, they don't have any means of anything besides cash,
and fourteen percent total or what's called underbanked, which means
(04:24):
they don't really have proper credits. So you're looking at
about one out of seven households that really rely on
cash all the time. Certain payments, certain industries, you'll see
a much higher percentage of people paying by debit at
the pump, it's a little bit more than eighty percent.
Inside the store for us, it's about fifty percent. Is
(04:45):
still cash because they're smaller ticket items about eight dollars
or something like that, so a little easier to pay
by cash than say, if you go to a grocery
store where it's going to be say one hundred dollars.
So you're right, we are moving to a cash list society.
We're not there yet, and for certain people we're not
there at all.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
So it occurs to me that there's probably two major
ways of doing this with rounding. One is, as we
were talking about before, round up or round down, depending
on if it's six seven or eight nine.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Am I allowed to say six to seven? Gina, No,
you've said it so many times.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
I guarantee all Jen Alpha is doing that little hand gesture.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Oh man.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Okay, So if it's six seven or eight nine, you
can round down, round up, and it should be a wash.
There may be people, and I'll give you an example
here from the just like a psychology thing.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
If you're if you're driving home and.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Most of the lights tend to be green, you probably
won't notice if you're driving home and you hit red
light after red light after red light, you're gonna notice,
and you're gonna be cranky about it, even though statistically
are the good version of that happens just as much.
So I'm wondering if customers maybe will be more annoyed
by the round up from eight to nine then they
(05:56):
will be pleased by the round down from six and seven.
And if so, is that a factor for you, guys,
because the other uh uh, the other option would be
just simply round everything down, but maybe raise the price
of everything by a penny or two.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah, so, I think you described human beings perfectly, and
that's that's not a negative. But when they're when you're
faced with a positive and a negative, usually you know
you you you're more bothered by the negative than you
are pleased by the positive. I'm describing me at least,
but probably a lot of people listening to so.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
That's that's why it's important that that nationally we communicate this.
So somebody that is not reading the news, not listening
to your show walks in and it's like, wait, you
just charged me two cents more. I don't get this,
and uh so you know it'll take time for people
to get used to this, and that's why we need
national communications, you know, and I've done nobody needs to
(06:59):
hear math. People don't like math. But I've gone through
all the calculations, and you know, people were asking, like,
will this require more nickels? Will this require more dives? Oddly,
it will not require more nickels. It will not require
more dives. It will require more quarters and obviously it
takes out some pennies. So, like I said, people don't
like math, I'm not going to go further than that.
(07:20):
But then there's also people I said, well, if we're
getting rid of the penny and nobody likes likes the
nickel too, can we do that as well? And that's like,
let's set that aside for another day. Let's just deal
with a penny right now and get that right and
then people can talk about the nickels the next less
love today.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, and that'll be coming because nichols costs something like thirteen.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Cents to make, so that'll be the next conversation.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Jeff Leonard is Vice president for Media and Strategic Communications
for the National Association of Convenience Stores.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
And if you are a math nerd The math.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Thing he was talking about is up on my blog
at Rosscominski dot com, so you can go check it out.
It's actually super interesting if you're a math nerd. Thanks
for your time, Jeff, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Thank you, guys,
The penny thing has been going on for what the
better part of a week now, with the US Treasury
or the US Mint no longer making any pennies and
a lot of stores freaking out about it and trying
to hoard pennies, which maybe we'll work for a little while.
But I've been reading in multiple places some very interesting
(00:20):
comments on all this by my next guest, Jeff Leonard,
is the vice president for Strategic Communications for the National
Association of Convenience Stores. And Jeff, if I understand your
position correctly, and I definitely don't want to put words
in your mouth, so you tell me what I got
right and what I got wrong, although I'm going to
(00:40):
keep it simple. You guys are fine with getting rid
of the penny, but not particularly.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Fine with just how it was done. Is that about right?
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And then let's elaborate on a little bit, especially on
the second part of that.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah, you captured it right.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
First off, our industry is pro customer, and for years
the customer has said, yeah, the penny, we don't really
care too much about it. It slows down transactions. We're about
fast transactions. But right now, because there is no congressional
congress needs to make these decisions, and with a shutdown,
(01:16):
you know there was delay and all that, but they
need to say that it is okay to round up
in round down. Without that, you know, retailers are faced
with you know a lot of bad decisions and you
know that complicates things for customers.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I hadn't thought about that aspect.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
So are you saying that somebody could potentially bring some
kind of lawsuit, like a like a class action lawsuit
for all the rounding up or something.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
What's the fear here?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
And doesn't rounding up and rounding down if we're talking
about rounding down, if with prices ending with six or seven,
and rounding up with prices ending with eight or nine,
wouldn't you think that just in terms of the the
aggregate impact on consumers, shouldn't it be a wash?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It should be a wash.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
And that's what has happened in Canada. Canada has been
doing this for more than a decade. Australia some other countries,
but it was a longer time frame. It was like
a year where they kind of had communications campaigns they
went out with that. This was a lot more sudden,
so yes, with potential lawsuits. As my lawyer friends say,
(02:20):
anybody can sue anybody. The question is, you know, will
it actually work? But there's complications that our industry faces
with things like gas prices. How do you set gas
prices if the price might be dropped, rounded up, rounded down?
Is that legalbates based on weights and measures? How does
(02:42):
this affect snaps? Snap spending the news a lot, But
with snap that is electronic payments, and they are supposed
to be those prices are supposed to be the same
for them as everybody else. But if just rounding up
and rounding down, there's not. So there's a lot of
uncertainty and a federal standard that says this is what's happening,
(03:07):
this is when it's happening, this is what you're allowed
to do. Can't sue somebody for this? That's what our
association is looking for and what our industry is looking for.
But then I'm sure customers have all kinds of questions.
What do I do with pennies? What do I do
with this? How will it work? So yeah, a lot
of questions to be answered, but you know we're on
the right path, I hope, Jeff.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
I want to look at this from the customer standpoint.
Real quick because you brought up gas prices, and to
be honest, I didn't even consider when we think about
the couple pennies short of gas prices because I'm always
putting gas on a card. And this might be like
a millennial mindset here, but I feel like we're in
a time where we're just becoming more and more of
a cash list society. So is the penny going away
(03:47):
really impacting businesses that much?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Do we still see.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
That many people paying with cash specific coins and the
exact dollars or are we seeing more and more people
just using cards and more and more business almost not
even accepting cash at times?
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Well, you have to accept cash, there's certain certain states,
certain statutes you have to accept it. But about four
percent of the population of households out there are what's
called unbanked, they don't have any means of anything besides cash,
and fourteen percent total or what's called underbanked, which means
(04:24):
they don't really have proper credits. So you're looking at
about one out of seven households that really rely on
cash all the time. Certain payments, certain industries, you'll see
a much higher percentage of people paying by debit at
the pump, it's a little bit more than eighty percent.
Inside the store for us, it's about fifty percent. Is
(04:45):
still cash because they're smaller ticket items about eight dollars
or something like that, so a little easier to pay
by cash than say, if you go to a grocery
store where it's going to be say one hundred dollars.
So you're right, we are moving to a cash list society.
We're not there yet, and for certain people we're not
there at all.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
So it occurs to me that there's probably two major
ways of doing this with rounding. One is, as we
were talking about before, round up or round down, depending
on if it's six seven or eight nine.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Am I allowed to say six to seven? Gina, No,
you've said it so many times.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
I guarantee all Jen Alpha is doing that little hand gesture.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Oh man.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Okay, So if it's six seven or eight nine, you
can round down, round up, and it should be a wash.
There may be people, and I'll give you an example
here from the just like a psychology thing.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
If you're if you're driving home and.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Most of the lights tend to be green, you probably
won't notice if you're driving home and you hit red
light after red light after red light, you're gonna notice,
and you're gonna be cranky about it, even though statistically
are the good version of that happens just as much.
So I'm wondering if customers maybe will be more annoyed
by the round up from eight to nine then they
(05:56):
will be pleased by the round down from six and seven.
And if so, is that a factor for you, guys,
because the other uh uh, the other option would be
just simply round everything down, but maybe raise the price
of everything by a penny or two.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah, so, I think you described human beings perfectly, and
that's that's not a negative. But when they're when you're
faced with a positive and a negative, usually you know
you you you're more bothered by the negative than you
are pleased by the positive. I'm describing me at least,
but probably a lot of people listening to so.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
That's that's why it's important that that nationally we communicate this.
So somebody that is not reading the news, not listening
to your show walks in and it's like, wait, you
just charged me two cents more. I don't get this,
and uh so you know it'll take time for people
to get used to this, and that's why we need
national communications, you know, and I've done nobody needs to
(06:59):
hear math. People don't like math. But I've gone through
all the calculations, and you know, people were asking, like,
will this require more nickels? Will this require more dives? Oddly,
it will not require more nickels. It will not require
more dives. It will require more quarters and obviously it
takes out some pennies. So, like I said, people don't
like math, I'm not going to go further than that.
(07:20):
But then there's also people I said, well, if we're
getting rid of the penny and nobody likes likes the
nickel too, can we do that as well? And that's like,
let's set that aside for another day. Let's just deal
with a penny right now and get that right and
then people can talk about the nickels the next less
love today.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, and that'll be coming because nichols costs something like thirteen.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Cents to make, so that'll be the next conversation.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Jeff Leonard is Vice president for Media and Strategic Communications
for the National Association of Convenience Stores.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
And if you are a math nerd The math.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Thing he was talking about is up on my blog
at Rosscominski dot com, so you can go check it out.
It's actually super interesting if you're a math nerd. Thanks
for your time, Jeff, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Thank you, guys,
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
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