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How the Dollar-Store Industry Overcharges Cash-Strapped Customers While Promising Low Prices (theguardian.com) 108

Posted by msmash from the sticker-shock dept.
Dollar General and Family Dollar stores have collectively failed more than 6,400 government price-accuracy inspections since January 2022, charging customers more at checkout than the prices displayed on shelves for everything from frozen pizzas to puppy food, according to an investigation by the Guardian. The review examined records from 45 states and more than 140 counties and cities. Dollar General stores failed over 4,300 inspections across 23 states, and Family Dollar failed more than 2,100 in 20 states. Error rates at the worst-performing locations reached staggering levels -- 76% at a Dollar General in Hamilton, Ohio and 68% at a Family Dollar in Bound Brook, New Jersey. A Family Dollar in Provo, Utah failed 28 consecutive inspections.

Industry watchers, employees and lawsuits attribute the discrepancies to minimal staffing. Registers update automatically when prices change, but shelf labels require manual replacement, and workers often lack the time. State attorneys general have pursued settlements -- Arizona reached a $600,000 deal with Family Dollar in May, Colorado settled with Dollar General for $400,000 in October and Ohio secured $1 million from Dollar General after finding error rates as high as 88%. Both companies declined interview requests but said they remain committed to pricing accuracy.

How the Dollar-Store Industry Overcharges Cash-Strapped Customers While Promising Low Prices More | Reply

How the Dollar-Store Industry Overcharges Cash-Strapped Customers While Promising Low Prices

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  • I thought everything was a dollar!

    • Dollar General is more of a "General Store" - that is, it includes a variety mix of things from hardware to groceries to OTC drug store stuff and housewares. It's _everywhere_ in rural America.

      It does not promise a $1 price for everything, and the headline is misleading.

      Dollar Tree and Family Dollar have operated on the "single price" model, though I'm not vouching for their current operations.

    • That was so...2019. None of the "dollar stores" sell everything for a dollar any more.

    • I thought everything was a dollar!

      Right... I worked for The Beer Store, the brewer-owned private company which distributes beer across the Province of Ontario. Our Premier (roughly equivalent to a State Governor) made a campaign promise of "A buck a beer!".

      So, a new empty can cost roughly $0.20 at the time. The law in Ontario is that shelf prices include tax and deposit. So, the can is $0.30 - twenty cents for the can itself, plus another dime for the deposit to make sure the used can comes back for recycling.

      Now, on top of that, you have t

      • I love it the Canada still uses the administrative division of the "riding", which noun has pretty much disappeared outside Yorkshire with it's North, East and West Ridings.

        Ride on!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      I thought everything was a dollar!

      Isn't the premise of a dollar store (or pound store) that everything is a single price...

      Otherwise it's just a cut price store and frankly, the Germans have shown us with their cut price supermarkets that they key to running a successful one is hyper organisation. Everything runs like clockwork, no confusion, Everything goes into it's assigned slot. Money is saved by reducing overall work (I.E. the staff just put boxes on the shelves and let customer take the products out themselves), reducing costs and

      • Running a disorganised cut price shop seems counter-intuitive as you'll just drive customers away.

        And they'll go where? The other "disorganized cut price shop" two blocks over? Until the economy (or at least their personal finances) the average dollar store shopper shops there out of necessity, not choice. If they could go somewhere else they would.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          Running a disorganised cut price shop seems counter-intuitive as you'll just drive customers away.

          And they'll go where? The other "disorganized cut price shop" two blocks over? Until the economy (or at least their personal finances) the average dollar store shopper shops there out of necessity, not choice. If they could go somewhere else they would.

          Mentioned two already, Aldi and Lidl.

          There's a reason Aldi and Lidl are growing so fast in so many countries.

          They've been particularly successful in penetrating countries that have traditionally suffered from a lack of competition, like Australia.

  • So pay the government their cut and it is (Score:3)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Monday December 08, 2025 @02:18PM (#65843935)
    continue business as usual with no changes! "Arizona reached a $600,000 deal with Family Dollar in May, Colorado settled with Dollar General for $400,000 in October and Ohio secured $1 million from Dollar General"
    • They just didn't bribe trump enough.

  • the understaffing is riddiculous. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday December 08, 2025 @02:23PM (#65843951) Journal

    I live 'out in the county', that is dollar store country.

    The typical Dollar General is a 60k foot store - sometimes bigger, and there are NEVER more than two employees working. Which means one person on the register and one other person to do any re-shelving, stock keeping, pricing, etc.

    No way they are getting all that done.

    • The Kroger by us, in a fairly densely populated suburb, has over 25 positions open. The nearby Wal-Mart can't stay open 24-hours because they can't get enough people to work the night shift. Two nearby restaurants closed because they couldn't keep enough staff to stay open during lunch and dinner rushes.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by davidwr ( 791652 )

        >The nearby Wal-Mart can't stay open 24-hours because they can't get enough people to work the night shift.

        My nearby wally-world isn't open 24 hours either, but it wouldn't make economic sense for them to be open 24/7 even if they did have staffing. There are simply not enough customers during the hours they are closed. There is a 24-hour wally-world within a 30 minute drive if you REALLY need something, and plenty of 24-hour overpriced convenience stores nearby (I assume they are open 24/7 for brandin

      • Those restaurants deserved to fail, then. Pay people a decent wage, and they'll work for you. This is a fundamental axiom in business.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The other fundamental axiom of business is accounts receivable must exceed accounts payable. You can offer $25/hour to your employees but if you only bring in $100/hour in sales during open hours, the business will fail. You can raise prices to compensate, but who will pay $250 for two scrambled eggs and toast?

          • The other fundamental axiom of business is accounts receivable must exceed accounts payable. You can offer $25/hour to your employees but if you only bring in $100/hour in sales during open hours, the business will fail. You can raise prices to compensate, but who will pay $250 for two scrambled eggs and toast?

            Don't forget to factor in grants the a business gets for whatever including building the store. Lots of industries are affected by taxes (including negative and sometimes, if below zero, refundable tax credits) and grants. Big bushiness have a whole crew that do such as accountants, lobbyists, lawyers, paid industry seminars for the judges.

          • It's amazing how cheap food is in Japan yet somehow they don't have to rely on customers providing most of the employee salary directly through tips.

            Oh yeah, in most places around the world they don't have franchise fees funneling profits up to the executives and share holders.

  • rip off (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    everything used to be a dollar thats where their name came from now its price-gouge general and family-ripoff

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by davidwr ( 791652 )

      >everything used to be a dollar thats where their name came from now its price-gouge general and family-ripoff

      Translation: They used to sell things that costs a lot less than a dollar elsewhere.

  • It's OK for corparations to lie ... (Score:3)

    by J. L. Tympanum ( 39265 ) on Monday December 08, 2025 @02:26PM (#65843963)

    "Both companies ... said they remain committed to pricing accuracy."

    Why do they even bother issuing obviously false statements like that?

  • It's intentional mispricing. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 ) on Monday December 08, 2025 @02:33PM (#65843987) Homepage
    Do you think they care about $600k? Dollar stores fit an odd segment, either you need something random you know your dollar store has, which is the only time I go, or, you're poor and need single use small format things to get by. In either case, their best option for making money, is to steal it, and the best way to steal it, is to show you one price, and charge you another, that's higher. They will always use the excuses that staff are overworked, or, staff are expensive, or, it was an accident, but none of that is true.

    If they cared, they could force price compliance automatically using e-paper tags. The fact they don't deploy modern solutions to a known issue, means they don't want to solve it. The real solution for consumers, you need to pay attention to what price shows up when a product is scanned. That sounds obvious, but almost no one pays attention.

    They'll gladly pay $600k, to steal millions, and no government or regulatory board is ever going to make a fine high enough to be a deterrent. Imagine hitting Dollar X with a $250 million fine, plus, 10-years of independent oversight through a fully isolated third-party monitor. That's a deterrent, $600k is the government giving the wink, "awful, you shouldn't have done this, I hope a cheque doesn't fall out of your coat as you leave *wink *wink".

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Do you think they care about $600k?

      They will if the inspectors come every week until the practice stops.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        And we all know that won't happen.

        The thing with fines is that all the people ACTIVELY involved have interests that don't align with the public and taxpayers.

        The shops are ok with fines if they happen rarely and in manageable amounts. Then they can just factor them in as costs of doing business.

        The inspectors need occasional fines to justify their existance. So, counter-intuitively, they have absolutely no interest in the businesses they inspect to actually be compliant. Just compliant enough that the non-c

    • Do you think they care about $600k?

      To some extent, probably, and I'm guessing they'll find a way to pass it along to their customers, after writing the fine off on their taxes. Rich people and corporations care about every penny. For example: Elon Musk calls for abolition of European Union after X fined $140 million [cnbc.com] -- which is literally pocket change for him.

      • Agreed.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        You misunderstand wealth.

        Most wealth of the filthy rich is in assets. Musk OWNS stuff that is worth X billions. That doesn't mean he as 140 mio. in cash sitting in his bottom drawer.

        Moreoever, much of the spending the filthy rich do is done on debt. They put up their wealth as a collateral and buy stuff with other people's (the banks) money. There's some tax trickery with this the exact details I forgot about.

        So yes, coughing up $140 mio. is at least a nuissance, even if on paper it's a rounding error.

        The a

    • No, the staffing argument makes much more sense. They cut every corner they can (which is why I don't buy milk there) to keep prices low, and that means a small and unenthusiastic staff. And that means a lot of basic housekeeping doesn't get done on time, like updating the price tags.
      • Right, but that's not an excuse, since you could automate the tag changing automatically. How many times do you call into a customer service line and hear: "We're experiencing higher than normal call volume!", so often that if I said every time, the very rare exception is in the noise. You can't always have "higher than normal", that's not how averages work, in the same context: "We understaffed, slashed hours, misclassified employees, and stole labour, so it's their problem." doesn't work either. You he
        • Automating the changes costs money. Apparently, more than it costs to have someone walk around with a stack of tags. These stores survive by keeping costs as low as possible.

          In the end, I think the whole issue is being overblown to benefit whoever needed a byline. It's clearly not something that bothers customers enough to change their habits, so the stores won't bother to change theirs. It's not something fraudulent, like the headline suggests, it's just a banal shelf-tag issue.

          It would have been b

          • It really is a type of fraud when you think about it, they knew the stores were understaffed, by intention, so it's not an excuse. Part of this does fall on the customer, since they can verify the price at checkout, but, the executive teams can't try and re-direct the blame.
            • I get what you're saying, I just can't see it that way. "Copilot search" says, "In U.S. law, fraud is generally defined as an intentional misrepresentation of material fact made by one person to another, with knowledge of its falsity, for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, resulting in injury or damage." The DoJ is rather unclear about it - https://www.justice.gov/archiv... [justice.gov]

              Anyhow, as I see it fraud requires the intent to deceive, not the potential for a deceptive outcome of other activitie

      • They are understaffing on purpose not only despite the requirements, but because of their desire to not meet them.

    • either you need something random you know your dollar store has,

      Years ago I was with my parents in a Dollar Store. We weren't looking for anything in particular, just seeing what's there. We went through the condiment aisle and they had these tiny bottles of ketchup and mustard from name brand companies.

      My dad wondered about why they would do this and I told him to think of it this way. You're on vacation or a business trip or whatever. You need ketchup or mustard, but you don't want to buy an e
      • Exactly! If I need kitchen stuff, like sponges, a strainer, drain plugs, that's where I go, and maybe for the odd Island Bar, which is a Bounty Bar knock off. I don't buy food, food there, but all the surrounding ones do have several isles of groceries, and you could buy a pantry full of items if you wanted. I'm not sure if they have milk, never noticed, but I don't buy food food. Maybe the odd bag of chips if I'm with my daughter, but again, it's for one-off things, at least for me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      If they cared, they could force price compliance automatically using e-paper tags. The fact they don't deploy modern solutions to a known issue, means they don't want to solve it.

      These automated tags are about $15-$20 each. If you buy a million you can probably get them for $10, but still. Oh yes, and their stated lifetime is 5 years. And you STILL need an employee to walk around updating because it's done via NFC.

      In many cases, there are modern tech solutions, but pen-and-paper is still cheaper, easier and more reliable.

      It's not necessarily malice. What I mean is: They are certainly malicious, but maybe not in this.

  • This is the US, the land of less is more, and it definitely applies to the greater part of the stuff at the `dollar` stores. Many of the products are just smaller and effectively more expensive or worse versions of what you can buy at Walmart at a better overall value. For example, at the dollar store you'll pay $1.25 for a single ball point pen and at Walmart it will be 5 of the same basic pen for $5. People don't really do math or shop around as they think that they can get what they need at the dollar

    • Re:Most of the products are actually over priced (Score:4, Insightful)

      by blackomegax ( 807080 ) on Monday December 08, 2025 @02:50PM (#65844029) Journal
      Boots theory of economics. If people had economic literacy they'd throw a fit, but they do not. Also, buying in bulk is fine and dandy, but it's rough when a trip to costco runs $300 at the register and a trip to dollar general runs $30, even if you're paying more per/lb/item

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by davidwr ( 791652 )

      Some good reasons to buy single items vs. quantity:
      1) You can't afford to buy in quantity, meaning the choice is to buy single items or go without.
      2) You only need one in the foreseeable future. For example, most people don't buy more than one Christmas tree.
      3) The cost to store the items you aren't using immediately is too much. Sure, I may buy 10 frozen chickens in the next year, but if I buy them all at once, I'll need a spare freezer to store them in, and a place to put the freezer.

      I'm sure there are

      • Transportation is another reason.
        - Large stores are usually fewer in number, farther away, and not easily reached by public transit. The highest prices are often in poor neighborhoods where people can't afford to drive to the cheaper store.
        - How would you carry that 10-frozen-chicken package if you don't have a car?
    • I don't know which one you're shopping at, but my local DG is generally cheaper than Walmart. Walmart's milk won't be pre-spoiled though.

  • Never know what I'm suppose to be charged anyway (Score:4, Informative)

    by chipperdog ( 169552 ) on Monday December 08, 2025 @02:46PM (#65844017) Homepage
    My local dollar general (about the only general merch store in my town), is so disorganized that I can never match up products to shelf tags anyway....

  • They were never "Dollar Stores" (Score:3)

    by anoncoward69 ( 6496862 ) on Monday December 08, 2025 @03:02PM (#65844063)
    Dollar General and Family Dollar were never "Dollar Stores" of the likes of Dollar Tree up until recently. All 3 operate in similar ways of over charging people when it comes to per oz prices. You might get something for 10 cents an oz at one of these stores while the same product costs 3 cents an oz at walmart but you'll be buying a significantly larger package of the product that costs in total more than the one at the dollar stores. These stores prey on people too stupid to budget. That bottle of dawn dish soap cost $1 at these dollar stores, but the one at walmart costs $5. But you're going to need to buy 8 of the dollar store ones to equal whats in the walmart one.
    • For consumables you're right, but you can often get great deals on "durable" goods where quality isn't an issue. Paper plates: bad idea, but cheapo dishes? Fantastic. Sunglasses that you just want to block the sun and don't care what they look like? $1.25 last time I was there. With many things, it makes sense to buy a more expensive but higher quality version, but some things the rock-bottom cheapest piece of crap is just fine, and the only places that will come close to dollar stores are Temu and AliExpre

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by davidwr ( 791652 )

      >These stores prey on people too stupid to budget

      The stores would say they provide a service for those who can't afford to buy larger sizes.

      Like predatory lending, which makes a similar "we provide a service to ..." claim, "prey on" and "provide a service to" can be the same thing depending on who is talking and what side of their mouth they are talking out of (bitter sarcasm intended).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hwstar ( 35834 )

      Maybe we should rename them "Wallet Stores" as they take your entire wallet like Jane Jetson did.

  • Michigan (USA) has a "customer bounty" on pricing (Score:4, Informative)

    by davidwr ( 791652 ) on Monday December 08, 2025 @03:03PM (#65844071) Homepage Journal

    If a customer catches you cheating, you have to pay the difference plus a penalty of 10x the difference (minimum $1, maximum $5). It's been this way since the 1970s.

    Michigan's pricing laws [michigan.gov]. More info, including government enforcement examples [freep.com].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      Now THAT is a rare example of an actually smart law.

      No government funds needed to enforce the policy, while the stores have an incentive to post the right prices. Why the max $5 though?

    • If a customer catches you cheating, you have to pay the difference plus a penalty of 10x the difference (minimum $1, maximum $5). It's been this way since the 1970s.

      Michigan's pricing laws [michigan.gov]. More info, including government enforcement examples [freep.com].

      It is time for an inflation adjustment to such a law. For one this /. article talks about a retail store that is the lowest dollar amount per item. When is the last time you only got overcharged the amount was just fifty (50) cents or under? Seeing that law covers all types of retail including furniture and in this case dollar store retail. I say to catch up to the bulk of inflation since that law has not caught up and been adjusted with inflation since the 1970s the minimum penalty should be $5 and maximum

  • Why don't they just print a rack-end price or a price list for an entire section of the shelving every 20 feet or so ?

    They could update the prices more quickly then. Or is there a requirement that the price label be immediately adjacent to the item ?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by davidwr ( 791652 )

      >Or is there a requirement that the price label be immediately adjacent to the item ?

      I don't know about a legal requirement, but there is a customer expectation.

      I for one will pass on an item if I can't quickly find its price. If the store generally makes it hard to find a price for a given item ("go to the end of the rack, search for item...") then I'll find someplace else to shop.

    • Well back when Dollar Tree was actually a dollar store there was no need to update any pricing cause everything in the store was the same price. They should just call themselves Tree Dollar Tree and price everything at $3 They might loose a little on some products but makes it up on other and probably on average break even

  • Here are some reasons:

    1. Lower quality goods.
    2. Smaller quantities. (Your per-unit costs will be higher, and the unit size will be smaller then what you will find at a grocer, or general goods stor, and there will be less units in the package)
    3. Their stores are messy. Merchandise strewn about on the floors instead of in bins or on shelves. Maybe their customer base doesn't care and the lack of staffing means that its an intractable task.
    4. Sometimes they are the only store in a rural area, or the only stor

    • I noticed years ago that things like cards (birthday cards, thank you cards, anniversary cards, those kind) were $1 - and often USA made rather than glitter filled $4 things from China that Hallmark sold. That was nice. And they were $1. But I haven't been in one of those stores for years...it's gotten more disorganized and it's not in a convenient place for me to visit when I go to town. But some things were bargains there.

  • Registers update automatically when prices change, but shelf labels require manual replacement, and workers often lack the time.

    maybe this is their business model?

    • They make wireless e-paper price tags that can solve this issue.

      • They make wireless e-paper price tags that can solve this issue.

        but do they want to solve the problem?

        • They make wireless e-paper price tags that can solve this issue.

          but do they want to solve the problem?

          No. In a Kohl's store there are for years on end several signs that don't work for years on end (different signs, during different visits in the parts of the store that one happens to be in, it probably happens elsewhere in the store as well seeing it has been an ongoing numinous years issue). A few of them just are blank due to maybe battery issues although of the bulk of signs that have issues most of them that do not display prices and just say "ready to connect" with no price on them. Probably a few doz

    • Unlikely. It makes more sense for it to be an unwanted consequence of their "as cheap as possible" model. There are easier ways to find ways to increase the margins that won't involve fines and bad PR.
  • This is exactly my experience at Walmart. If I'm buying more then a couple things it's a question of how many items are priced incorrectly not if any are. The errors are, not surprisingly, never in my favor.
  • I live in Californina and Ottawa, Canada. In Canada we have Dollaramma, which has lots of stuff between $5 and $1.25. For cleaning supplies they are amazing as well as anything where quality doesn't matter much. And to be fair they have some decent quality stuff. I've seen the exact same products for $4.50 CAN sold for $14.00 USD in the Dollar General. With the exchange rate thats 4x the price. That was maybe extreme but for everything else the price is 2.5x the Dollaramma store and often smaller size

  • Years ago, she wanted to go to a dollar store for school supplies. $1 for generic glue or $0.19 for Elmer's glue at Wal-Mart or any other big box store. Nothing new... my kids have been out of school for a while... let alone grade school when they needed such supplies.

  • A lot of these stores use third-party contractors to make their price changes. They don't pay them well or follow up on their work in many cases, so the contractors might end up placing a few and ditching the rest. It's no surprise to me. Rapidly-changing prices is a paradigm shift for these entities, and they haven't pivoted very well. I feel like the regulators care more than the stores ever will, or even their customers.

  • Since "deeply discounted" does not necessarily mean a price tag of 1.00 pound-dollar-euro (or 2000 TzSh or 10000 Won) and such stores routinely post non-simple prices (integers, half integers, etc), there is a sub-story here : an appalling (or hilarious) proportion of people who cannot do simple mental arithmetic like adding up the purchases in their basket as they go round the shop.

    I should be appalled, but seeing the number of morons on X or YT (and to a lesser extent here ; lesser, but not zero) who thin

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