Me too. I know I'm in the minority with this, but I much prefer to do business (repeatedly) with a firm that isn't employing bullshit tactics. It would be interesting to see a study that reflects the whole cost-per-customer, since resorting to such pricing tricks means you're inevitably attracting consumers who are extremely price driven and who may be harder to upsell or retain.
There's a burrito chain in the northeast US called Boloco, and while their prices seem pretty arbitrary, all of the post tax prices are always whole dollar amounts. It's the only place I know of in Boston that does that.
As a Brit, I was amazed first time I went to the States with this idea of shops not putting the actual price you're going to pay on stuff.
I don't care how much money the shop is getting, as opposed to the state. All I want to know is how much money I'm going to be spending to get the thing, and I don't want to have to do calculations to work it out.
As an American, I'm used to our system, but I don't like it ... but, the tricky part in the US is that sales tax(es) aren't national, so prices differ at state, county, city, and sub-city areas. I single café can build the tax price into their prices, which I do see occasionally, but there's no way to advertise a price of a something, including the tax, nationally (or even across all of my city, Minneapolis, for example).
I think the research showing that -1 pricing works for commodity items might not hold when the customer is more discerning and thus, as in my case, values a perceived respectful attitude from the company in pricing things on the even.
