Taking money from mathematically challenged customers

A couple of pricing tricks I’ve come across in the last week to take money from non-thinking customers.

Calling £9 equal to €10, then you need to know that the probability of Wizz Air being over an hour late (probably plus another 15 minutes padding in the flight duration in the first place) is somewhat in excess of 10% for this to make sense. I checked flight stats here and of course no airline has been an hour late that frequently this year. Tim Harford covers why you should not normally take out insurance anyway for things that won’t wipe you out.

I won’t comment on the send me an sms for a pound.

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I was in the market for a new phone, and found this pricing on O2 for an HTC One. Which option would you go for (this is just for the handset, the Airtime plan is separate and not dependent on the option picked below)?

The more you pay today, the less you will pay each month, indeed. Come to daddy. And surely the last option is only there as an anchor so that people believe they are getting a £600 phone. No-one’s that stupid?

Anyway, whichever option you went for, you’re [possibly] wrong: it’s £422 unlocked on Amazon.