You know what’s NOT cool?

Food Emporium has Coinstar machines that let you turn in a pile of coins in exchange for cash or gift certificates. Redeeming for cash requires paying a surcharge, whereas taking a gift certificate (to one of many online retailers) costs you nothing.

After moving out last month, I stopped by to get rid of a cupful of change I had accumulated. I had recently heard that they added iTunes to their selection of surcharge-free choices, so I dumped in my cup, took my receipt, and went on my way.

Today I finally got around to entering my redemption code into my iTunes account when I realized something. iTunes songs cost 99 cents each. Ergo, the cost of a number of songs, x, would be calculated with the formula $0.99x. 16 songs, for example, cost $0.99 * 16 = $15.84. (For simplicity, ignore the prices of full albums, which mess with this formula and ruin this story.)

My certificate, worth $15.82, was off by

TWO

CENTS.

I was furious when I discovered this. True, iTunes has been out for a while without changing their pricing structure, and I should have had a little more foresight when heading into the store. But who the hell takes in a bunch of change with any idea of how much money is actually there? Isn’t that the one of the reasons for actually visiting those machines?! I had no clue if I had 15 dollars or 50. Why on earth couldn’t they just round up and give me $15.84, or an even $16? (I’d be less upset about have an extra 16 cents in my account rather than 97.)

Some of you are thinking, “Why didn’t you just go back with 2 cents?” Well guess what? I just tried that. And you know what I encountered? A $5 minimum. Walked all the way over to Food Emporium to find out that the bastards bested me again.

So now I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I don’t think its possible to put 2 cents on my credit card, so it seems like my only real option is to save up exactly $5.96 in change and revisit the Coinstar (to meet the minimum requirement, include the 2 cents, and still have exactly the right amount to purchase songs with). Considering I don’t even have a home right now, trying to find a clean shirt to wear each day is hard enough. Keeping track of loose change is NOT going to be a priority anytime soon.

Since I have no idea what to do, I’ll just complain here on my blog. Because it seems like this is the one place where I can put my two cents in.