You're right the price is the same - my gripe is how they attempt to obfuscate the true price by breaking it up into installments. When something is priced as X payments of Y (as opposed to the actual price, XY), there's an underlying assumption that I wouldn't purchase it at 1 payment of XY, otherwise why bother with the "installments" mindgame at all? Maybe I'm a overly sensitive to these sorts of indirections and concealments, but having to constantly expend energy to figure out how much something really costs can become wearing.

And yes, I do find the fact that gas stations price at tenths of a cent to be very dishonest - especially when they ALWAYS round up to the nearest cent.