Dear Editor,
The following few moments in your daily newspaper is in reaction to Mr. Samuel’s proposal on a one guilder cent application on every liter of gasoline for the development of sports.
While it is a good incentive to the development of sports, one must add the flip side of the coin.
Gasoline is already high on everyone’s pocketbook and adding this extra NAf. 00.01 per liter is even making things worse.
For example, the extra gas that one is already burning in the traffic on a daily basis seems to be a conspiracy to make the driving population dish out more money at the pumps and who is benefiting and how does it work.
Simple, when you remain in the traffic jams morning noon and night your dollar or guilder is just evaporating. So instead of your monthly consumption being US $100 it becomes $120, a $20 extra for the gas station owners who undoubtedly are “representatives” of the people.
Furthermore, what about those gas stations that take your hard earned dollar at NAf. 1.75 and not Central Bank stipulation of NAf. 1.77 to the dollar. There again is extra rip-off.
What should also be instituted by government is that all businesses should refund the consumer their rightful change and not keep the one or two cents even up to five cents per customer. Some business places even tell you boldly, “I do not have five cents” and expect you to accept it. By the way, a lot of us do, so stupid.
And when you say okay, well give me 10 cents then the retarded cashier of the business place will say, “But what then, I will lose five cents.” Strange enough, you the consumer must lose your hard-earned money and not the businesses who already have their prices sky high. Some cashiers even develop an attitude and practically toss the cents at you in anger.
Mind you, without a doubt there are some occasions when the businesses refund you in excess, but those transactions are few. It is like the casino, you win a little (once) and lose a lot more (four times).
The cents that are lost by the consumer on a daily basis result in over $2,200,000 per year. In case you cannot pronounce that figure it simply means two million two hundred thousand US dollars.
You may feel I am chatting nonsense or BS, but allow me to illustrate since this is right up my alley:
Example #1. Small businesses with 150 consumers per day and manage to Steal $0.02 from 100 persons = $2 per day X 30 days resulting in $60 per month X 12 months to equal $720 per year. Estimated 800 small businesses X $720 = $576,000, five hundred seventy-six thousand US dollars.
Example # 2. Medium-size business with 350 consumers per day and manages to steal $0.02 from 250 persons = $5 per day X 30 days resulting in $150 per month equal to $1,800 per year. Estimated 400 medium-size businesses X $1,800 = $720,000, seven hundred twenty thousand US dollars.
Example # 3. Big businesses with 700 consumers per day and manage to steal $0.02 from 550 persons = $11 per day X 30 days resulting in $330 per month equal to $3,960 per year. Estimated 250 big businesses X $3,960 = $990,000, nine hundred ninety thousand US dollars.
Total amount being ripped off by +/- 1,450 businesses and a loss to us, the consumer, remains at $2,286,000, two million two hundred eighty-six thousand US dollars, and this can be considered on the low side not forgetting the gas stations.
Remember the bank employee who was scamming one cent from every customer’s transaction for years until they caught up with that person, they were living the high life off of cents.
Also tourists who come to this island see the high-day robbery taking place but do not react because they realize this is the system here by not giving back the correct change and may not want to embarrass themselves by asking for what is rightfully theirs.
Like in the USA, simply reimburse the consumer his/her correct change. If they do not want to accept this then it remains up to them. If there is no correct change then the business should give back rounding off upwards; e.g., your change is $13.22 then give $13.25 and not $13.20.
What I do from time to time is travel with some cents and when about to be paid short my two or three cents I will provide the difference in order to receive my full five cents.
I must admit according to Joan and Fernando that there are a lot of retarded persons who refuse copper cents, but that is left up to them. They say they cannot do anything with that and it would not make me rich. Honestly, I feel sorry for them. The cents have made a difference in my life, trust me.
The average consumer can leave between here and there up to NAf. 0.15 or more per day between the various shops, stores and other business places. Please do not tell me that the banks cannot provide cents.
So, as food for thought to our parliamentarian of good intention Mr. Samuel, I would also like to see the law reintroduced or reactivated to motivate the businesses to return the correct change to the consumer as it reflects over two million dollars per year that we are being ripped off.
Remember, nowadays every cent counts.
Michael Frederick
