How to upsell

The answer is simple. Don’t have change.

Zimbabwe adopted the US dollar, but they only have dollar notes (including $2 notes!) and above, no change. At least not in US currency. You can use South Africa’s Rand or Botswana’s Pula but they won’t accept Namibian Dollars. Both Pula and Rand are counted on the exchange rate of 10:1 which is worse than the normal rate of 8:1, but since the Pula is weaker than the Rand, it works out better to use Pula.

If you need change at a supermarket, here’s what you can get:

50 cents = 5 Rand/Pula or a box of Tic Tacs

40 cents = 4 Rand/Pula or a disposable razor

30 cents = 3 Rand/Pula

20 cents = 2 Rand/Pula or a pen or a Fizzer

10 cents = 1 Rand/Pula or 1 piece of bubblegum

Bear in mind that 99% of the time they do not have Rand or Pula for change so you are more than likely going to end up with a few pens or lollies or you could get whatever you want for the remaining change value at the counter. We heard that one local gets tomatoes to the exact value. But most tend to get a receipt with their change marked on it, which they can put towards their next purchase at a ‘TM supermarket’, but then most people lose it or it tends to fade.

At a Chinese takeout, we found containers of lollies to the value of 10, 25, 50 and 75 cents and you take the lollies from the particular container you need to make up your change.

What works much better though is their bottle deposit system. Bottles are usually worth 20% of the value of the drink, for example Sparletta (soft drink bottles) are 20 cents and 500ml bottles of beer are 40 cents. It doesn’t matter where you buy the bottle from, you take it back to the supermarket and they will cash you out – well when they have cash otherwise it’ll be pens or sweets as mentioned above. The result – no-one throws bottles away – a fantastic recycling initiative.

I’m wondering why they stopped giving out the larger refund amounts except for South Australia in Australia?