Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices
441 comments
·December 7, 2025jefftk
technothrasher
Note that this law is only for certain products. We would have people at the liquor store I used to own point out mislabeling occasionally and claim we owed them the $10 difference from this law. While we tried to work with customers when we made a pricing error, not only does the accuracy law not apply to alcoholic beverages, but it would often be illegal for us to offer the customer the mistaken price. Alcohol retailers in MA are not legally allowed to sell their products for less than they purchased them.
Cyclone_
That's probably aimed at reducing consumption.
coin
Michigan in the 90s had a similar rule. Customer gets 10x the overcharge (up to $5 max). I can guarantee you they fixed the price immediately.
Where I live there’s no such rule I can tell you no one is correcting the price when I point out that I got overcharged (they usually shrug with “it does that sometimes”).
jimmydddd
"It does that sometimes." I guess for some reason the minimum wage cashier was not fully invested in maximizing the customer experience.
underlipton
It's different in different states. In Maryland, once a complaint is filed with the relevant authority, the store has a certain number of days to correct pricing. Most retailers will give you the misprice if it's clearly their fault in not changing the tags, as a matter of policy.
The confusion around this law is quite frustrating, though. Quite a few customers think they're entitled to not just prices on tags that haven't been updated, but prices for what are clearly entirely different products.
regera
Dollar stores are private equity with a checkout lane.
In 2025, Dollar Tree sold Family Dollar to a group of private-equity firms: Brigade Capital Management, Macellum Capital Management and Arkhouse Management Co.
https://corporate.dollartree.com/news-media/press-releases/d...
It’s a business model cosplaying as poverty relief while quietly siphoning money from the people least able to lose it. They already run on a thin-staff, high-volume model. That 23% increase is not a glitch. They know their customers can’t drive across town to complain. They know the regulators won’t scale fines to revenue.
JKCalhoun
Here's how shitty of a business person I am: I had no idea that the poor were a "market" you could prey upon.
Somehow I thought that if I presented a business plan that began, "Our target audience are those living paycheck to paycheck…" that I would be quickly shown the door.
sema4hacker
Has private equity ever done anything good for anyone outside of the investors?
jimmydddd
It seems to offer interesting opportunities for young recent high level MBA's.
WarOnPrivacy
> Has private equity ever done anything good for anyone outside of the investors?
If it's not publicly traded, it's super secure from any public accountability.
And while I'm increasingly hostile toward the shareholder model, we do get one transparency breadcrumb from this (gov managed) contrivance: The Earnings Call
Earnings Calls give us worthwhile amounts of internal information that we'd never get otherwise - info that often conflicts with public statements and reports to govs.
Like CapEx expenditures/forecast and the actual reasons that certain segments over/underperform. It's a solid way to catch corporations issuing bald-faced lies (for any press, public, gov that are paying attention).
AT&T PR: Net Neutrality is tanking our infra investment
ATT's EC: CapEx is high and that will continue
GolfPopper
>If it's not publicly traded, it's super secure from any public accountability.
Under the existing legal and regulatory model, yes.
But what abusing that model long-term will eventually result in government-level change that effectively bans the existence of such exploits, wide-spread vigilantism, and/or some sort of collapse.
gruez
I'm not sure why private equity is singled out here, when every time a public company does a bad (eg. Boeing), people crow about how public companies only care about juicing next quarter's earnings.
darth_avocado
The big difference is the extent to which PE will go to juice the quarters earnings. Public companies cannot and will not just fire all staff, fleece customers to the point they won’t return and take on debt that they have no intention of paying back. PE will do all of the above and more if it means they get their money. Which means, you as a customer get screwed over more when PE is involved.
venturecruelty
Galaxy brain: both are bad, although at least a public company is, ostensibly, trying to make a good or provide a service (lol).
CPLX
Private equity is far worse. It means 100% ownership by a group of sociopaths who are executing on a plan to extract as much cash as possible quickly with no other goals at all.
At least public companies have some diversity in ownership and agenda.
chongli
Private equity are the crows of the economy. They pick off weak / dysfunctional businesses and open space for fresh competition (or for other markets to open up).
darth_avocado
As far as I’ve seen that’s as far from the truth as it can be. They in fact consolidate terrible businesses, undercut the good ones and drive them out of the market until only they are left, after which point, they get even worse.
no_wizard
If only it actually played out that way[0][1][2][3]
Whatever legal and theoretical role they play in the economy does not match the actual, real role they are playing: PE firms are by and large, economic vampires. They have a well documented history of sucking the life out of a sector at the expense of workers and consumers alike
[0]: https://www.wired.com/story/megan-greenwell-bad-company-priv...
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/10/slash-and-b...
[2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/private-eq...
[3]: https://doctorow.medium.com/the-long-bloody-lineage-of-priva...
andrew_lettuce
That's not true at all! Funds often look for mature companies with predictable cash flow. They can make returns while also squeezing margins under the illusion of expertise and economies of scale and seek to the next fund for a multiple. They're an alternative to the massive headache of going public and getting a liquidity event, not typically the model for your weak and dysfunctional company.
VerifiedReports
Tell that to former JoAnn Fabrics customers.
LorenPechtel
They pick on the weak companies but the basic model is to pick over the corpse and leave someone else holding the bag. Make it look good on the surface, leverage it to the hilt, extract cash and let it die.
seanmcdirmid
I think the avian analogy you are looking for are vultures picking at the remains of road kill.
venturecruelty
How do I travel to the alternate universe where private equity apparently makes things better instead of worse?
hellotheretoday
this would be somewhat arguable as okay except for their introduction into categories like daycare, emergency rooms, drug and alcohol rehab, care homes for the geriatric and disabled, etc. things that probably shouldn’t be profit oriented to begin with yet are and are being snatched up by private equity, worsening outcomes in basically all of them
JumpCrisscross
> Has private equity ever done anything good for anyone outside of the investors?
Yes. Productivity typically goes up [1]. Its reputation for job cutting is overblown [2], as is its record on price increases [3]. And historically, it's tended to decrease concentration in the industries it operates in. (The conglomerate break-ups of the 1980s were fuelled by new entrants and carve-outs.)
Instead, what I think we have is a category error. Berkshire Hathaway is a private equity shop as is all venture capital [4], and most family businesses of any scale are structured identically to sponsor-owned firms. Meanwhile, LBOs have been unable to shake the private-equity label for decades, unless they're lead by a founder, in which case they're "take private" transactions. In essence, we brand failed alternative asset strategies as private equity ex post facto.
Moreover, transaction size is negatively correlated with returns, particularly for leveraged buyouts. So the biggest private equity deals, which represent a minority of transaction activity, are disproportionately (a) bad and (b) public.
Finally, we get a lot of false conflation of market failures to private equity per se. Private-equity owned hospitals are bad [5]. But I haven't seen great evidence they're worse than other privately-owned hospitals with similar scale. The problem is hospitals probably shouldn't be run for profit or on-locally. But because nobody in particular is defending private equity, that's easier to attack.
[1] https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=67233
[2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/43495362
[3] https://centers.tuck.dartmouth.edu/uploads/cpee/files/Is_Pri...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_history_of_private_equit...
[5] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2813379#go...
epsteingpt
The question anyone reading this analysis should ask is: if private equity is so benign, where do the returns come from?
The unlock, which these papers don't understand, is the extractive nature of P/E that is hidden.
A few clues: 1. A .5%-1% increase in prices is meaningful (Overall industry prices rise after buyouts, but again the price increase is on average very modest.) Retails margins routinely are measured in fractions of percentage points (bps). As an example, even if overall hospital prices stayed similar, P/E firms have been caught jacking up prices on people who need it most. Research on "Surprise Billing" in emergency rooms spiked immediately after PE firms took over staffing groups. Are you surprised?
2. Equity multiples are "effectively" a form of stealing from retail / pension plans: this is where the real 'theft' happens (if you want to call it that). If you reraterevenue from 6x (private) to 15-20x, someone is now paying 2-3x more per dollar to have that company in society. The key is the P/E OWNERS reap that value, so even if there are no job cuts, the wealth being created aggregates 'money supply' to the owners. This has downstream impacts on inflation.
3. Independent of aggregate effects - local effects are quite devastating. This is not P/E's fault, but closing down plants can kill towns for good. The question here is ownership - a family feels some tie to the community to attempt to help their friends and neighbors. P/E absolutely destroys this tie - the subtle but measurable effects compound.
Finally, even if you like P/E as a VEHICLE (which - I would argue it hasn't been a 'good' ones since like the late 90s), you can't ignore the fact that it's returns have largely been eaten by fees.
You're right to say that P/E is just playing the market. That doesn't mean that its impact on society has been good - the entire reason we're in the current political and economic situation we are today are by following the 'laws of the market' which have hollowed out the middle class and created a pretty large affordability crisis despite the world having achieved record levels of wealth.
The transfer from 'doers' to 'owners' has been a net negative for American society, and one of the primary reasons we don't 'build' things anymore - it's just not capitally "efficient"
tpmoney
If you're a Dell customer, Michael Dell taking the company private again seems to have done wonders for them.
holysoles
In general I have a pretty negative view of private equity. However I did see this awhile back that seems at least partially positive: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/27/private-equity-giant-kkrs-an...
regera
Not yet. Sometimes employees if they get second bite of the big apple. PE do well in capital-intensive sectors. I'm not sure if their playbook fits the real needs of dollar stores. Instead of focusing on things like debt and aggressive cost cuts, most customers just want fair prices, stocked shelves, clean stores, friendly cashiers and basic respect—things that PE firms often ignore. In DFW, I was surprised to see 1-2 person dollar stores!
thanhhaimai
And this is exactly why I only shop at Costco. While other retailers try to get me to buy more stuffs, Costco try to make sure I'm satisfied enough that I'll renew my yearly membership (their main profit source). The incentive structure aligns very well.
Waterluvian
Buying in bulk is about having the ability to both afford next week’s food this week and have the means to store it. Not to mention the annual subscription.
Responding to a comment about dollar stores preying on the poor with, “that’s why I shop at Costco” is… a choice.
strix_varius
The fact that the strategic wedge with which a successful, relatively socially-positive business manages to sustain itself isn't universally accessible doesn't negate its value.
The Venn diagram between people who shop at dollar stores and people who shop at Costco isn't empty.
andrew_lettuce
This is true, but a valuable - and damning - observation that this variation in business model, that seems to be both decent and profitable, is so rare
LorenPechtel
For me it's very simple: What I save on glasses pays for my membership. I don't go all that often but it's still worthwhile.
joncp
... and a car to haul all that stuff, and time to drive to the nearest Costco.
It really is a luxury that a ton of people can't afford.
gruez
>While other retailers try to get me to buy more stuffs, Costco try to make sure I'm satisfied enough that I'll renew my yearly membership (their main profit source). The incentive structure aligns very well.
This doesn't make any sense. Costco makes a profit on the goods sold as well. They have every incentive to sell you as much stuff as possible. That's why they also engage in the usual retail tactics to increase sales, like having the essentials all the way in the back of the store, and putting the high margin items (electronics and jewelry) in the front. They might practice a more cuddlier form of capitalism than dollar general, but they're still a for profit retail business.
xingped
I see you're not terribly familiar with Costco. Membership fees account for the vast majority of net operating income for Costco and they keep markups on items at no more than 14% over cost (15% for Kirkland brand).
So yes, Costco does make most of its profit by ensuring customers are happy and continue to renew their memberships every year.
andrew_lettuce
Counter example: they sell their dollar hotdog and pop right at the front!
jmspring
The sad thing is, people in rural areas that depend on places like Dollar General, and are getting fleeced blame everyone but republicans and they are usually in red areas
antonymoose
I’ll bite…
I live in a rural area with a Dollar General about a half mile from my neighborhood. For staples, it’s honestly fine. You want a 6 pack and some hot dog buns because you missed it in the Wal-Mart run the other day (15 miles away), it’s great!
You’re not getting fleeced and if you are, the gas savings alone more than make up for it (0.65 per mile per the IRS.)
For folks who depend on the local DG for, idk, clothes and household goods it might be much worse, I don’t shop for those there ever, but on staples it’ll do, especially given the density of stores compared to major chains.
BobAliceInATree
The problem is that they drive out local grocery stores that were actually pretty good, have terrible safety records, and food sanitation.
Last Week Tonight did an episode on them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4QGOHahiVM
WarOnPrivacy
Being in a shopping rich area, I have some luxury of choosing what I get where. DG is a good option for a small list of items, about ½% of my shopping.
But it'd be awful if my best shopping option was 15mi away.
autoexec
The concept of "small convenience store near me" isn't the problem. The problem is that these stores are actively engaging in outright fraud. People who shop there are absolutely getting fleeced regardless of how much gas they burn getting to the store that's regularly ripping them off.
Having a small nearby connivance store and not getting scammed is an option. If the ability to get beer and hot dogs buns without having to drive to a larger more distant store is really worth the higher prices customers are getting fraudulently charged at the register, then these stores can just stop lying to customers and post the accurate prices.
If the laws were meaningfully enforced this is exactly what would happen. These stores would either comply with the law and stop committing fraud or they would be shut down, their CEOs would be sent to prison, and competitors willing to follow the law would step in to fill the need the market has for a small shop that sells beer and buns to rake in that profit for themselves.
dehrmann
> Dollar stores are private equity with a checkout lane.
Dollar Tree and Dollar General are publicly traded.
So Family Dollar might be the result of PE tactics, but the other two aren't, and Dollar Tree sold Family Dollar because they saw it as under-performing.
It's actually sort of weird Dollar Tree couldn't make it work. I know the dollar stores all have somewhat different businesses, but you'd think that Dollar Tree could have either turned Family Dollar around or knew it was selling a loser (see the market for lemons) to PE.
lotsofpulp
> They already run on a thin-staff, high-volume model.
Like every other retail business not targeting the top 5%.
And Dollar Tree and Dollar General are both publicly listed companies, not private equity.
Dollar Tree sold Family Dollar for $1B 10 years after buying it for $8.5B, a pretty big loss. Dollar Tree’s market cap is $25B, so a pretty negligible part of the national dollar store business is “private equity”.
whynotmaybe
Costco
phil21
Costco purposefully targets the upper middle class to nearly the point of exclusion of everyone else. By charging membership fees, product selection, and the bulk pricing.
They could care less about the bottom 50% of the market.
alephnerd
Costco's revenue comes from their membership fees and their ability to strongarm suppliers to give them favorable terms (eg. Costco is one of the largest alcohol importers in the US and tends to strongarm LVMH).
I love Costco (I practically grew up at Costco as a kid), but their ICP is not the kind of person who shops at Dollar General or is on SNAP - it's very much targeted at the 50th percentile income bracket and above [0].
And this is why PE has taken over the dollar market segment - because it's a trash business that no one else wants to service over the long term. PE is basically the last resort if a business cannot raise capital from traditional avenues, and leadership and investors want to exit. For y'all graybeards think of "Sam Vimes Boots theory".
Mine Safety Disclosures did a great overview on Costco's operating model a couple years ago [1].
[0] - https://www.businessinsider.com/how-costco-sams-club-shopper...
[1] - https://minesafetydisclosures.com/blog/2018/6/18/costco
antonvs
> cosplaying as poverty relief
Does it really? Who says this, and who believes it?
WarOnPrivacy
>> cosplaying as poverty relief
> Does it really? Who says this
(search engine: 22 relevant results in 0.85s.)
we’re here to provide affordable and convenient access to name brands,
DG’s private brands, nutritious foods, household essentials and more.
gruez
>we’re here to provide affordable and convenient access [...]
You'd have to be incredibly naive to interpret that as "poverty relief".
antonvs
> search engine: 22 relevant results in 0.85s.
Being able to understand what those results mean is the important part.
array_key_first
I mean, it's in the name.
antonvs
You’d have to explain why you believe that. Just because someone in poverty can afford to purchase items in the store, doesn’t mean it’s good value, i.e. it’s not necessarily providing relief from poverty. In fact, it’s the opposite. See e.g. “How the dollar-store industry overcharges cash-strapped customers while promising low prices”:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/03/customers-pa...
sergiotapia
private equity is a tumor on this country. it seems any business stained with this actively becomes worse for the customer for as long as possible.
tdeck
If you live in Seattle and you find items are rung up for the wrong price, I highly recommend reporting it to the city. I did this once and was shocked that they promptly sent someone out to check the store and issue a citation. The inspector who emailed me was very polite and professional as well. It's rare to have something like this taken seriously and to have the enforcement properly funded.
Unfortunately I don't remember which form I filled out but I believe it was this one
https://www.seattle.gov/your-rights-as-a-customer/file-a-com...
cs702
> Red Baron frozen pizzas, listed on the shelf at $5, rang up at $7.65. Bounty paper towels, shelf price $10.99, rang up at $15.50. Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, Stouffer’s frozen meatloaf, Sprite and Pepsi, ibuprofen, Klondike Minis – shoppers were overpaying for all of them. Pedigree puppy food, listed at $12.25, rang up at $14.75.
Surely, now that this made the news, there will be an investigation into the fraudulent behavior of Dollar General and Family Dollar.
Left unsaid is that both Dollar General and Family Dollar would become unprofitable if they stop tricking customers. (Both companies typically earn only 3-4% on sales.)
jeltz
It was investigated, the issue is that the fines are smaller than the profit. I would personally want to see things like this considered fraud and that it can result in prison sentences for executives and other people invovled in the decision making.
rtp4me
You want prison sentences for execs if you were charged $1.50 for a can of corn instead of $1.45? Surely you can't be serious.
dawnerd
Ya the problem needs to be a fine the first time, second time it’s fraud. Allow for honest mistakes. Punish for clearly defrauding customers. We really need jail time for execs making these decisions but that rarely happens.
teeray
Corporate fines should all be percentages of profits.
estearum
Pretty trivial to make profits "not exist" though if you planned to engage in fraud and wanted to de-risk it.
null
StanislavPetrov
Revenue, not profit.
ant6n
Or revenue?
jeltz
Percentage of global tärevwbue works. We know that from GDPR. But I would personally prefer prison sentences for the execs.
ssl-3
Some people say it's trickery, but when I apply the razor I find pricing errors more likely to be the result of stupidity than of malice.
Having worked in retail myself, I understand that some days there just isn't time to get it all done. A debt of unfinished tasks can accumulate. It happens. Sometimes old prices get left up. (I think the stupidity is on the part of management more than it is the employees, but it's still more stupid than it is malicious.)
---
Dollar General got into the thick of it with the Ohio Attorney General a couple of years ago[1] over this issue: The prices on the shelf didn't always match the prices at the register. Stores were closed[2] while they updated their price tags to match reality.
And as part of the settlement with the Ohio AG: Nowadays, when I go into a Dollar General and Red Baron pizzas are on the shelf for $5 and they ring up at $7.65, they're required to honor the posted price of $5 when I bring this up to them.
(That last bit really should be enshrined in law instead of the footnotes of a legal settlement with a single entity, but alas: It just isn't that way in Ohio.)
[1]: https://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Media/Newsletters/Consum...
[2]: https://www.supermarketnews.com/foodservice-retail/ohio-ag-d...
doctor_radium
I would like to think incompetence as well, but when the problem is this widespread, IMHO it does point to a corporate issue...even if that's simply leaving too many incompetent managers in charge. IMHO if you're the manager and the part-time teenager didn't finish updating all the shelf pricing, then it's on you to finish before going home. But today too many people just don't give a damn.
My first job was in retail as well, going back to the days before scanners when every item item was ticketed individually. When something goes on sale you ticket it again, then tear off the sale price stub when the sale ends. Repeat as needed. Maybe that could be a suitable punishment, too? Force stores to abandon shelf pricing for a period of time until it hurts enough that they get their act in order?
nerdponx
Hanlon's Razor is not relevant with large amounts of money at stake. in fact the complete opposite is the best approach: The more money that's involved, the more you should suspect malice until it has been conclusively ruled out.
shepherdjerred
As a company seeking to maximize profit, why would you fix this problem? It seems optimal to say "it's out of our control" -- you get to overcharge customers, and you have a reasonable explanation if a lawsuit comes.
I would be curious to see how often it's the other way around, e.g. they undercharge a customer.
ssl-3
I prefer to think that people (including those who run corporations at the level of -- you know -- price tags) are broadly more incompetent than they are malicious, dishonest, replete scumbags who would sooner stab a person in the back and take their wallet than give them the time of day.
It is possible that I am wrong about this.
ryan_lane
You're applying that razor incorrectly. These dollar stores are run with a skeleton crew, where it's impossible for the workers to keep the store in order, or to update the prices on the shelves. The prices of items at the register is managed centrally. They ensure resources exist to increase prices at the register and not on the shelves, and that's misleading and fraudulent.
This isn't a pricing error. They should change their practices to require prices be updated on the shelves, and for that to be verified, prior to the prices at the register applying (and this should be required by law).
It's funny that it's criminal when someone shoplifts from a dollar store, but knowingly showing one price and charging a higher price isn't a crime. We need to start treating corporate theft as crimes, rather than as a cost of business.
pjc50
This is very American: it's illegal, but everyone accepts both that the law will be enforced very unevenly, and that this kind of thing doesn't get solved by the regular political process. There's no political consumer complaints culture, it's seen as an individual matter.
You couldn't get away with this for as long in the UK as a retailer. Either the CMA or Trading Standards would deal with it.
JumpCrisscross
> everyone accepts both that the law will be enforced very unevenly, and that this kind of thing doesn't get solved by the regular political process
Nobody agrees on that. TFA follows "a state government inspector" whose effectiveness is hampered solely by a "North Carolina law" which "caps penalties at $5,000 per inspection." That law [1] doesn't exist outside North Carolina.
This is the first time I'm reading about this. We have a dollar store in my town. I'm curious to replicate this experiment myself and send the results into the local newspaper if the discrepancy is real.
[1] https://www.ncleg.gov/enactedlegislation/statutes/html/bycha... § 81A-30.1
cogman10
> this kind of thing doesn't get solved by the regular political process.
Yeah it does. This is specifically the sort of thing that the FTC is in charge of addressing.
That is ultimately controlled by who the president is. There is some funding problems with these enforcement agencies that forces them to pick and chose their battles. However, you'd be naive to think that there isn't a significant difference from how Lina Khan ran things and how Andrew Ferguson runs things.
antonymoose
Keep in mind, this is also a state thing. I live on the NC/SC/GA border so I view news for all three daily.
I routinely see this type of crime heavily policed and reported on in NC. Whereas my entire life is in coastal SC and never once in my life saw this repeated on or enforced.
nerdponx
In Massachusetts it's policed and enforced but the maximum fine per inspection is $5000 so it doesn't actually do anything (and it only applies to food anyway and stores are also allowed to exempt a fairly large number of items). https://www.mass.gov/info-details/accurate-scanning-and-pric...
nrhrjrjrjtntbt
It was investigated. They got fined $5k. 4 times.
Is there another law that can get them for repeat abuse.
limagnolia
Their attorney general could also sue them, as was done in several states mentioned- resulting in much larger settlements. Only the fines by the dept of weights and measures are limited.
tzs
>> Red Baron frozen pizzas, listed on the shelf at $5, rang up at $7.65.
The crazy thing is that even if it did ring up at the correct price it isn't a good deal. It's around $4.80-4.90 at Walmart and Target and others.
limagnolia
Paying 10 to 20 cents more for an item can still be a better deal than traveling further away to a larger store. The mis-pricing is completely unacceptable, though.
ryan_lane
But because these stores exist, they lead to grocery stores no longer existing, because they eat the majority of the profit from grocery stores. This forces people to shop at the dollar stores because it's the only thing nearby. The dollar store model increases prices, reduces consumer choice, and makes us less healthy.
delfinom
It's worse than that. In many cases the dollar stores now get skus of items made for them that are "cheaper" than a sku in Walmart but for a more expensive unit price than Walmart as they shrink the product.
wkat4242
> Left unsaid is that both Dollar General and Family Dollar would become unprofitable if they stop tricking customers. (Both companies typically earn only 3-4% on sales.)
They could of course show the actual prices instead of tricking customers?
If the margins are so low nobody else will be significantly cheaper anyway.
securingsincity
Massachusetts has a quite prominent law against this.
"When buying groceries—food and non-alcoholic beverages, pet food or supplies, disposable paper or plastic products, soap, household cleaners, laundry products, or light bulbs—you must be charged the lowest displayed price, whether on the sticker, scanner, website, or app.
If the lowest price you saw for an item is $10 or less, and that lowest price is not what you were charged or not what appeared on the in-aisle price scanner, the first item should be FREE. If the lowest price you saw for an item is more than $10, and that lowest price is not what you were charged or not what appeared on the in-aisle price scanner, you should receive $10.00 off the first item."
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/consumer-pricing-accuracy-...
Not to say it's not happening in a Mass based Dollar Stores but you could be walking away with a lot of free stuff and it would be enough of a deterrent to stomp out the practice. I've had it happen at grocery stores usually at their suggesting.
hippo22
Unfortunately, this type of conflict can only be adjudicated by courts, which low-income people don't have the time and money for. You couldn't just walk out of the store with the items. You'd need to either:
1. Buy the items and sue.
2. Take the items without paying, likely get the police called on you, and defend yourself in criminal and civil court.
jefftk
3. Point at the sign, which is posted at every register, and ask for your discount. If they say no you ask for the manager. I've done this several times, and never had an issue (but sometimes it takes a little while).
null
JumpCrisscross
> this type of conflict can only be adjudicated by courts, which low-income people don't have the time and money for
Massachusetts has a strong consumer arm at its AGO [1] and consumer regulator [2].
The problem is less one of cost of litigation than education about available options. (And the time to pursue them.)
[1] https://www.mass.gov/how-to/file-a-consumer-complaint
[2] https://www.mass.gov/orgs/office-of-consumer-affairs-and-bus...
jkaplowitz
Theoretically there is a third option, stay in the store near the cash register and call the police to come deal with it on the spot before the purchase. The problem is that they probably won't bother coming, and if they do, they won't come quickly enough to make it worth waiting for them given the amount of money at stake.
Edit: Yeah, I did say before the purchase, but I should have said after the purchase when they pay the legally correct price but the store accuses them of shoplifting and tries to detain them. And I know it's often infeasibly hard to pay the legally correct price from a logistical perspective without the cashier's cooperator, especially if you want to pay with a card. It is clearly possible to put at least the right amount of cash on the counter, ask for the change, and attempt to leave if they refuse, but that doesn't guarantee ever getting the change. Anyway, I did list this option as (purely) theoretical and not as actually practical.
almostgotcaught
this is a tort not a criminal act - cops wouldn't/couldn't do anything.
sejje
Call the police to come deal with...mispriced items? That's not the job of police, sorry. Not in the US anyway.
michaelmrose
If you walk out and it goes to court you will surely lose. You may have started with the right to get it for nothing but you cannot realize that right by force. Self-help is almost always illegal in any case of disagreement between parties.
mynameismon
Yeah, but someone living paycheck-to-paycheck and shopping at dollar stores is likely not someone who can afford filing a lawsuit.
mschuster91
> Unfortunately, this type of conflict can only be adjudicated by courts, which low-income people don't have the time and money for.
Here in Europe, we have consumer protection agencies. Get wronged? Shoot them off an email and they'll take care of it. And overcharging at the cash register? That gets handled by the responsible authorities. Again, call them, tell them what happened and it can get real messy real fast.
js2
I was having trouble getting Verizon to unlock an iPhone that had been purchased (not financed) from Best Buy and that had been on Verizon's network for more than two years. Verizon support said only BB could unlock it[^1]. I thought that was poppycock. I filled out a form on the FCC's web site just before midnight. By 8 AM, the FCC had forwarded the complaint to Verizon. By 9 AM Verizon executive relations called me. 30 minutes later the phone was unlocked.
Which is all to say, for some things, the US also has consumer protection and it's great when it works.
[^1]: Apparently only Apple sells unlocked iPhones. iPhones purchased at other retailers carrier-lock themselves at activation. At least on Verizon they're supposed to automatically unlock after 60 days. When that doesn't happen, you get stuck in Verizon's mindless customer support swamp[^2,^3].
[^2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Bestbuy/comments/17ae8l2/verizon_sa...
[^3]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Bestbuy/comments/1buemp5/why_is_it_...
zdragnar
We have such agencies over here as well. Most states have some sort of weights and measures agency that handles inaccurate price scanning complaints.
I can't say how effective they are at remediating small figure issues, but no company wants to hear from them regardless.
venturecruelty
We have those agencies as well. They've been steadily gutted since their inception, and the courts (well, the Court) don't care.
cormorant
Not only that, but they post a sign about this at every register. (That must be required.) So you can point to the sign. I think a typical store manager would comply. Maybe I'm not cynical enough.
phyzome
Yup. My local Star Market was pretty bad about this, so I started paying close attention to prices on the shelf and at the register. Pretty soon I was taking home free items every shopping trip. (I also reported them to Inspectional Services when aisle scanners were broken or prices were particularly egregiously missing or wrong.)
Some of the cashiers had to have it explained to them with much pointing to the sign that hangs on every register; others knew the drill and called a manager over right away.
After about 6 months they started shaping up. Maybe the store manager got fed up, or maybe corporate stopped having them skimp on sticker hygiene.
From the article:
> In one court case in Ohio, Dollar General’s lawyers argued that “it is virtually impossible for a retailer to match shelf pricing and scanned pricing 100% of the time for all items. Perfection in this regard is neither plausible nor expected under the law.”
...but in my experience, they're perfectly capable of doing the right thing, given appropriate incentive and enforcement. In particular I noticed that this really varies from store to store, even in the same chain.
cyberax
> ...but in my experience, they're perfectly capable of doing the right thing
It's both true. Given that a typical store can have thousands of SKUs displayed, mistakes will _always_ happen once in a while. A forgotten price tag, an incorrect sale price, etc.
But at the same time, stores are more than capable of having a system to _fix_ these issues as soon as they are detected. It doesn't even take much, just a way for a cashier to flag an inconsistent price for someone at the back office.
doctor_radium
So this means I would get the app-only sale price, without using the app?
While doing some research into state retail pricing laws a few years ago, I discovered how tough Massachusetts is, being one of the last holdouts mandating ticketing on all items, and only relenting in exchange for price scanners every so many aisles. Living in Pennsylvania and annoyed by stores tying their best prices to their apps, I fancifully emailed Elizabeth Warren, asking if she'd prod a friend in state government to consider a legislative end run around apps. I had no idea such a law really existed. "First in the nation" I expect. Wonder how long it's been around?
phil21
Probably doesn’t apply for most app pricing, since those are typically advertised as “digital coupons” or the like in the fine print.
kube-system
I can’t help imagining that the likelihood of successfully arguing for a free product with a DG cashier is slim to none.
BrenBarn
> But North Carolina law caps penalties at $5,000 per inspection, offering retailers little incentive to fix the problem
This is a huge problem with all manner of laws in the US. We are not willing to insist that fees be limited only by their ability to prevent the prohibited behavior. Fines should continually escalate, if necessary until the offender is bankrupted, at which point their assets are taken. If Dollar Tree keeps doing this, the fines should eventually reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, even the billions. Such penalties should also apply to company executives and board members who are responsible for the company's overall conduct.
JumpCrisscross
It looks like North Carolina’s previous Weights & Measures law was entirely criminal. So in 1991 they added civil powers, but curtailed the fines.
The solution here appears to be less in raising the civil fine and more in criminally investigating, to start with, the store manager [1].
[1] https://www.ncleg.gov/enactedlegislation/statutes/html/bycha... § 81A-30.1
stevenjgarner
It is important to understand that Dollar General and Family Dollar serve thousands of flyover communities where there are no Walmart stores or other viable market access. Dollar General has stated that it can generate profits in communities with fewer than 1,000 homes. Walmart generally requires a much larger population base for its stores.
Dollar General is the largest retailer in the US by number of locations, with over 20,000 stores across 48 states. Family Dollar operates over 8,200 stores. Walmart's U.S. store count is significantly smaller (around 4,700 U.S. Walmart stores and 600 Sam's Clubs as of 2024).
Dollar stores are frequently found at the heart of "food deserts," which are often rural communities located more than 10 miles from a grocery store selling fresh produce—a gap often created when a community is too small to maintain a supermarket or attract a retailer like Walmart.
stevenjgarner
I am not an attorney, but given that Dollar General and Family Dollar are highly likely to serve a much larger percentage of SNAP-eligible customers, isn't there a far more serious FEDERAL crime being perpetrated here of retailer abuse and fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), often referred to as food stamp fraud? That is, if the SNAP customers have no other means of purchasing food (living in a food desert), and the retailer is intentionally charging more for food items, isn't the retailer committing fraud against the US government? Federal criminal prosecution of SNAP violations could result in fines up to $250,00 and imprisonment up to 20 years. More significant consequences than otherwise being reported here.
itchingsphynx
In Australia, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission:
- Businesses must communicate clear and accurate prices prior to consumers booking, ordering or purchasing. They must not mislead consumers about their prices.
- There are specific laws about how businesses must display their prices.
- Businesses must display a total price that includes taxes, duties and all unavoidable or pre-selected extra fees.
- If a business charges a surcharge for card payments, weekends or public holidays, it must follow the rules about displaying the surcharge.
- If more than one price is displayed for an item, the business must charge the lowest price, or stop selling the item until the price is corrected.
In practice, if the checkout price is more than listed price, many retailers give the item for free. It doesn’t stop dodgy constantly fluctuating ‘on sale’ pricing…
Full_Clark
Requirements about surcharge notifications and displaying all-up prices are nice, but the gap here will still be about enforcement and not regulation. The core problem for dollar-store shoppers in the US is about getting the retailers to honor the sticker price, not whether the sticker price shows all state and local taxes.
Is the Australian shopper protected simply by a stronger culture of adherence amongst retailers or is it because regulators inspect more often and take stronger action against failures?
protocolture
Regulators take tip offs and if one gets through, the enforcement action is usually pretty fast and strong.
They also like doing this. The ACCC makes a huge deal out of parading their latest conquest in the media.
Has its faults, the ACCCs dealings with telcos are especially terrible.
I still have friends at an Applecare provider based in oz, and they had a big one where as a settlement with the ACCC over trying to have it both ways with consumer law, they agreed to provide repairs or replacements for like a decade of wrongfully denied hardware issues. Hushed it right up. It was in lieu of a public apology from memory. But my friends spent weeks calling back old customers, chasing new contact details etc, to try and get them all free replacements.
itchingsphynx
Yes, probably difficult to compare regulation and inspection.
As for enforcement, ACCC recently took Microsoft to Federal Court for hiding Copilot pricing shenanigans, as discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45721682
motza
I guess it might be a cultural thing? The shelf price is the binding price here in practice. If you get to the register at the supermarket and the price is higher, you can just let them know and they will send someone to check the price and match it.
itchingsphynx
Yes, seems to be partly regulation and enforcement partly cultural in a voluntary code of conduct that tends towards benefit to the consumer. For example,
[All the major grocery retailers] are signatories to the voluntary code of practice for computerised checkout systems in supermarkets. Generally, this means that if an item is scanned at the checkout at a higher price than it says on the shelf or as advertised, a customer is entitled to receive the first item free and all multiples of the same item at the lower price.
https://www.choice.com.au/shopping/consumer-rights-and-advic...
This practice not just matches price (dang, you caught us out this time), but incentivises minimising errors (oops, our bad, have it for free).
JSR_FDED
23% of items are rung up at a higher amount at the register than what it says on the shelf, yet North Carolina law caps penalties at $5,000 per inspection, offering retailers little incentive to fix the problem.
In other words, regulatory capture at its finest, over the backs of the poorest in the country.
fencepost
Depending on how much independence the inspectors have they could probably turn a heck of a profit per inspector (thus being able to argue their continued existence to the legislature).
Could an inspector manage two per day? If you figure the full cost of each inspector is $150,000/year but dedicated ones could do 8 inspections at $5k each per week, there's well over $1 million/year per inspector (assuming not all inspections would be the full fine, there's travel costs per inspector, inspectors would have to spend some office/court time, etc. that would bring it down from the potential maximum of ~$1,800,000 each factoring in vacation and holidays).
Even Republicans could get behind it! "We're reducing the direct budget of the department, but authorizing it to hire additional inspectors in order to bring in additional revenue that can be utilized to bring the budget to or above its current levels." It's a cost reduction measure!
itsdrewmiller
It’s not regulatory capture unless the regulatory body itself is controlled by shady grocers. This is just garden variety insufficient regulation. Although if they inspected every day it would probably still be profitable for the state.
lowbloodsugar
The rich own congress. At this point, it's all regulatory capture.
raw_anon_1111
While I agree, for the most part this comes under state regulations. Especially red states are always trying to cut taxes and the government at the cost of not having enough inspectors.
amarant
Say what you will about the EU, but they figured out how to scale corporate fines correctly: max 10% of owning entities annual income.
apparent
Seems like it actually creates an incentive to go big or go home. If you're already going to be busted and hit with the maximum fine, might as well have even larger mispricings, so you come out ahead after the fine is taken into account.
gessha
What this calls for is an Amazon-style optimization of inspections. Given X inspectors and Y locations, what is the most optimal routing to optimize for coverage and penalty collection?
terminalshort
Better optimization would be to make everybody an inspector. You catch a store doing it on video and report it to the agency, you get 50% of the fine.
Paradigm2020
In Australian supermarkets when the price of the item is wrong you get the item for free. (At least it was like that in 2011). Cashiers would run into the store to go fix the price tag.
mindslight
Amazon-style optimization? You mean they send three different inspectors to the same store on the same day, each scanning one third of the necessary items for the audit?
burnt-resistor
Offtopic, but I made the mistake once of buying groceries from Amazon and they instead sold me a package of cheddar cheese that was completely blue from mold. Some "quality" inspections they got going don't bode well for public-private "partnerships" that outsource essential government functions to a corrupt third-party that's likely to be owned by a craptastic private equity hedge fund.
adamsb6
The error rate is nonzero, but in my experience Amazon will make it right with little friction. A short chat is almost always enough, no labyrinthine phone trees or escalations.
mystraline
> yet North Carolina law caps penalties at $5,000 per inspection
So, have every agent in the state inspect them. Fine 5k. Immediately inspect again, different goods. Fine another 5k. Keep doing it opening hours.
Treat them like an inspection money piñata until they fix their ways. State gets a big pile of money to do better, and massive fines at 5k a pop for a few weeks punish the company and their bottom line.
phil21
Why are we taking this whole “the $5k fine is nothing” thing at face value?
A long time ago I used to help manage a couple retail stores. A $5k random expense would have put that location into the red for the month. Perhaps not the volume of a dollar store chain, but certainly not small either.
I have a feeling that if the $5k fines were basically guaranteed to happen with some regularity you’d see this cleaned up pretty quickly with local management replaced ASAP if not.
Enforcement doesn’t have to be over the top abusive with the goal to put a location out of business overnight. Especially in already underserved communities. Like everything to do with humans there simply needs to be consistent, reliable, and timely consequences to form a reliable and immediate feedback loop for behavior.
If a store makes it an actual policy to eat these fines then the fine amount needs adjusting. From everything in this article though the problem is simply it’s worth the gamble they don’t happen at all.
pixl97
I mean, more like someone elected and really high up in the state government calls the inspection office and tells them to stop, or everyone at the inspection office will get fired, since said elected person cares far more about getting reelected then the people that they should be representing.
null
burnt-resistor
I don't know NC law. Does it have an "invitation to treat" practice there where prices marked are a customer relations issue rather than a legally-binding offer?
To attain change, enough people have to:
1. Correctly identify the source of their misery, because it ain't [insert scapegoats].
2. Find others who agree with them.
3. Make a plan for effective countering of 1.
4. Use intestinal fortitude and endure temporary setbacks to achieve 3. to overcome 1.
5. Prevent 1. from ever happening again structurally, culturally, and through vigilant participation.
The 0th problem is the political operating system is captured by criminals and power has centralized grotesquely in ways that defeat the fundamental function of separation of powers. All elected officials corrupted by lobbyist bribes need to face accountability and have a code of ethics and integrity, because continuing down this path is the road to ruin.
dmurray
I don't think the laws of the specific jurisdiction matter. In every US jurisdiction, the prices aren't completely legally binding (what if the previous customer changed the price tag?). In ~every US jurisdiction, if you systematically show one price but charge customers another, that's an offence.
So intent matters. What would decide an individual case is not the exact characterisation of the laws on the books, but how sympathetic a regulator or a judge is to the supermarket's claim that these things just happen sometimes.
mindslight
If another customer changed the price tag, that would be in the same category as if a person unaffiliated with the store said "I'll give you a deal on this item for $10", then pocketed the money while you walked out with the (still not yours) item. This doesn't really have any bearing on whether the owner of a store putting up a sign with a specific price for a specific item that a customer can directly take possession of constitutes a binding offer.
joshuaissac
> NC law. Does it have an "invitation to treat" practice [...] rather than a legally-binding offer?
Are there any common-law jurisdictions in the world where having products on sale in a supermarket is not generally considered invitation to treat but as an offer to sell?
dotancohen
What is an invitation to treat, and how does a store with items on the shelf not constitute an offer to sell?
josh_p
When I worked grocery retail when I was a teen 20ish years ago, any time a customer disputed the price of something during checkout, we’d have someone check the shelf and find the display tag. If the price was lower as the customer suggested, we’d always give them the item at the price listed on the display tag. An employee usually just missed that tag during price change day.
It’s so foreign to me that any retail place would defer to “the computer” if display price and database price were out of sync.
Even young-me understood the idea of “oh yeah, our bad, have it at the lower price” and the potential for legal action if we did otherwise.
biddit
You need to think like an owner/operator to understand why you would defer to the system.
It’s to prevent employees from stealing. To “defer to the tag” requires a manual price override of some sort, which becomes an abuse vector.
shepherdjerred
These stores often only have 1-2 employees working at a given time.
video if you're curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4QGOHahiVM
ssl-3
Yeah, that "computer error" explanation is bullshit, probably rooted in a combination of CYA and narcissism.
When I worked in retail, we only had one database of pricing. The shelf tag and sign printers, the registers, the whatevers -- they all used that same database. If a shelf tag was printed at the same instant that an item was rung up, then they'd have had the same exact price.
There's mechanism for the prices to deviate.
(And yeah, pricing errors still happen at least because people are people. We make mistakes. We forget shit. We can even convince ourselves that we did a thing even if we didn't. We err. Even if we're absolutely honest with ourselves and others, we can run out of fucks to give. It's all part of our condition.
But of course: When a price was posted wrong then we fixed it once it was brought to our attention. The customer got the price that was posted, and the posting was changed.
For my own purposes, I had a habit of pulling the incorrect price tags and taking them with me back to the register; I'd just give them to whatever manager when they would show up with the key that was required for precise price adjustments and get back to doing whatever it is that my primary job was at the moment...which, if I were handling a register, meant something other than printing shelf tags.)
mr_windfrog
If the goal is to fix the behavior instead of just documenting it, the penalties need to escalate with repeat violations. The first mismatch can be treated as an honest mistake. But when the third or fourth inspection still shows the same pattern, the fine shouldn't be the same $5k: it should jump sharply. At some point the cost of ignoring the problem has to exceed the profit from letting it continue.
Right now the incentive structure is backwards. As long as the downside is fixed and small, large retailers will keep treating it as business-as-usual. A tiered system tied to repeated violations would at least push them toward actually fixing the issue, instead of just shrugging it off every time they get caught.
fat_cantor
I noticed my local wal mart doing this, not on every product, but more than one. I had hoped it was an honest mistake until it happened on my next visit. I told an associate about it, left my groceries, and I haven't been back. It's wild to think that a few decades ago they accepted returns of any product based on trust, no questions asked, regardless of whether you had a receipt.
> Red Baron frozen pizzas, listed on the shelf at $5, rang up at $7.65. Bounty paper towels, shelf price $10.99, rang up at $15.50.
This very rarely happens in MA, because when it does the store has to give you the item for $10 off, including if that makes it free. And they have to post a sign at the register explaining the law, which means when you're invoking it all you need to do is point at the sign.
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/consumer-pricing-accuracy-...