One Point Two Five, or Twelve Hundred and Fifty

The question came in politely, and a little confused. The guest had been reading the rates on their phone. They wanted to know if the overnight was really so cheap, or if they had misunderstood. On their screen, the figure looked like 1.250.

Where they came from, a point in a number is a decimal mark. So 1.250 reads as one and a quarter. One euro and twenty-five cents for eight hours made no sense, and they knew it. But they did not know what the real figure was.

What had happened

On this site, the overnight is written 1,250 euros. The comma separates the thousands. It means one thousand two hundred and fifty. The guest had copied the figure into a note on their phone to compare prices, and the phone had written it back in the style of its own language. In that style, the thousands mark is a point. So the comma became a point.

The digits were the same: one, two, five, zero. Only the mark had changed. And that mark, in the guest's own habit of reading, turned a thousand into a one.

Why nobody noticed at first

Most of the time, context saves us. A coffee costs a few euros, and nobody reads it as a few thousand. But for something new, where you do not yet have a sense of the price, context is missing. That is when a mark between digits can mislead you, in either direction.

The reverse happens too. A guest who reads 1,25 in a Dutch shop may think a digit is missing. It is not. In the Netherlands, 1,25 is one euro and twenty-five cents, the price of something small.

How the question was answered

The reply wrote the figure in words: one thousand two hundred and fifty euros, for eight hours, for one guest with one therapist. Then it added the half, because the overnight always has a deposit: six hundred and twenty-five before she travels, six hundred and twenty-five at the door.

Words remove both marks. Nobody reads one thousand two hundred and fifty as one and a quarter. For a figure you are unsure of, writing it in words is the surest way to agree.

Three habits on this site

Every rate on this site follows the same three habits. The comma is only used for thousands. No rate has cents. And figures under a thousand have no mark at all: 180, 270, 360, 540. So if you ever see a rate with a point in it, it did not come from here in that form. Your phone, an app or a copy and paste has changed it.

A simple check follows from this. Count the digits after the mark. Three digits means thousands. One or two digits would mean cents, and a rate here never has cents.

The halves

The deposit is where this matters most, because it is a sum you work out, or check, in your head. The overnight at 1,250 splits into two halves of 625. The pair of therapists at 2,880 splits into 1,440 and 1,440. The largest block, 5,760, splits into 2,880 twice. If you read any of these with the marks swapped, the halves stop making sense, which is a useful signal in itself. When a half looks wrong, the marks are the first thing to check.

Figures in the reply

A reply here always writes the price and the deposit as whole euros, with the comma only for thousands. You may see EUR before the number or the word euros after it. They mean the same thing. If you read the reply through a translation app, the app may rewrite the figures in the style of your language, and a comma can turn into a point on the way. So read the figure in the original English message first, then in the translation, and check that the digits are the same. If they are, the price is the same, whatever the mark between them.

What the guest did next

They booked the overnight a week later. Their first message included a line they had clearly thought about: price 1,250 euros, one thousand two hundred and fifty, correct? It was correct. The reply confirmed it in the same words.

That line is worth copying. It costs a few seconds and it closes the question before it can open. The guide to euro figures lists every rate in digits and in words, so you can check any figure against it.