[HN Gopher] Dollar-stores overcharge cash-strapped customers whi...
___________________________________________________________________
Dollar-stores overcharge cash-strapped customers while promising
low prices
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 171 points
Date : 2025-12-07 14:37 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| 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.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| America The Beautiful
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The rich own congress. At this point, it's all regulatory
| capture.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| 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.
| gessha wrote:
| 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?
| mindslight wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| terminalshort wrote:
| 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.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| dmurray wrote:
| Sure, but it's in the same category as the owner putting
| up a sign by mistake, or omitting to update a sign by
| mistake. Or more realistically, an employee of the owner
| putting up a sign even though the owner had instructed
| him to put up a different sign.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| What is an invitation to treat, and how does a store with
| items on the shelf not constitute an offer to sell?
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| The invitation to treat is the store inviting potential
| customers to treat (engage in commerce) with the store by
| submitting an offer to buy the displayed items at the
| listed price, which they usually do by bringing the items
| to the register or (for more specialized purchases)
| telling a store employee that they want to buy the item.
| When the buyer makes the offer, the cashier accepts the
| offer on behalf of the store by ringing up the purchase,
| and the buyer performs their end of the contract by
| paying the price, thereby contractually gaining ownership
| of their purchase.
|
| One reason it works this way is that treating displayed
| items as an offer to sell would leave it unclear to whom
| the offer to sell would be made. Clearly each item on
| display can only be sold to one of the many shoppers who
| sees it, so they can't all be offered the sale. There are
| several other reasons too, like different customers being
| offered different terms of sale based on loyalty program
| membership, promotions, student or senior discounts, etc.
|
| Here is the Wikipedia summary:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitation_to_treat
|
| As the article says, the term in various US jurisdictions
| may be slightly different, like invitation to bargain,
| but the basic concept is the same. (I'm ignoring
| Louisiana entirely, which has a completely different
| legal tradition not derived from English common law.)
| progval wrote:
| Regulatory capture is when a large company encourages stronger
| regulations that small competitors cannot afford to satisfy.
| Here the issue is regulation that is too weak, not too strong.
| thfuran wrote:
| No, that's just one form of regulatory capture. If this
| legislation is a result of lobbying from retailers opposing
| imposing meaningful fines, particularly if the state of
| things before its adoption was that penalties from failed
| inspections were often higher, then this is regulatory
| capture.
| mystraline wrote:
| > 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 pinata 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.
| amarant wrote:
| Say what you will about the EU, but they figured out how to
| scale corporate fines correctly: max 10% of owning entities
| annual income.
| sneak wrote:
| Why are fines capped?
| j-bos wrote:
| Maybe it's like unlimited PTO, without a cap nobody
| actually uses it.
| fencepost wrote:
| 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!
| nlh wrote:
| "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.""
|
| Sorry---what? Isn't that one of the fundamental basic jobs to be
| done and expectations of a retailer? You put physical things on
| display for sale, you mark prices on them, and you sell them.
| When the prices change, you send one of your employees to the
| appropriate shelves and you change the tag.
|
| When on earth did we get into a world where that absolutely
| fundamental most basic task is now too burdensome to do with
| accuracy?
| tokai wrote:
| Just make the sticker price legally binding and this issue
| would be solved with almost perfect precision.
| mindslight wrote:
| The sticker price is legally binding - it constitutes an
| _offer_ , and the cash register surreptitiously charging a
| higher price from what the customer has agreed to constitutes
| _fraud_. The problem is that asserting your rights takes
| time, resources, and energy that people shopping at these
| stores generally do not have. The people that would have the
| ability to push back instead just use their resources to move
| on and shop somewhere else that isn 't immediately abusing
| them.
| gucci-on-fleek wrote:
| > The sticker price is legally binding, as it constitutes
| an _offer_
|
| While I _wish_ that that were how things worked,
| unfortunately, the US legal system disagrees [0].
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitation_to_treat#Case_law
| dymk wrote:
| That's about ads, not sticker price on the shelf, and
| about a lack of obligation to sell at that price. It does
| not say that it's alright to lie and charge a different
| price at the register.
| rtp4me wrote:
| "The people that would have the ability to push back"...
|
| And they can. Just bring it up to the cashier or managers
| attention, and voila, they adjust the price. Please let me
| know if you have had a different experience.
| xrd wrote:
| Dollar General: "people these days just don't want to work
| (meaning, my clients don't want to do that work or pay lazy
| genZers...)!"
| jrmg wrote:
| It's virtually impossible for them because they're not
| considering hiring more people to do it.
|
| Dollar General stores often run with one overworked staff
| member doing everything in the store, from stocking to working
| the register (which is why the register is unstaffed so much
| and you have roam the store to find someone to ring you up...)
| nkrisc wrote:
| "Because of conditions of our own making, it is virtually
| impossible to comply with the law, thus we shouldn't be held
| accountable to it."
|
| It's the same BS when Meta and others say they can't moderate
| posts because there's too many.
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| I used to work at Best Buy replacing pricing stickers before
| the store opened. We had a sheet of new stickers for changed
| prices every time and had to scan every sticker in the store to
| make sure they were all up to date.
|
| It makes sense they're all switching to e-ink tags though,
| probably saves a ton in labor and the occasional mistake.
| spwa4 wrote:
| That's because those stickers constitute an offer of sale for
| a given price. If a customer comes in, takes the item, throws
| down the cash to an employee and leaves, that's a 100% bone
| fide legal sale.
|
| That's also why messing with price stickers is a crime.
| terminalshort wrote:
| An easy test for this is how often the price at the register is
| higher vs lower than the marked price. If it's close to 50%,
| then ok, it's a mistake. But if it's higher...
| Spivak wrote:
| I don't think you would reasonably expect it to be close to
| 50/50. Most price changes are increases and the mistake
| theory basically boils down to the employees never updating
| the shelf tags. Which I think is an extremely plausible
| theory since the one employee at the store isn't paid enough
| to bother. And who's even going to check that they updated
| the tags? Dollar General isn't shelling out money for that.
|
| There's another kind of store that's in a similar situation:
| thrift stores and nearly all of them have also decided this
| problem is too hard. Lots of items are marked with just
| colors based roughly around their estimated value and the
| store changes the price/color mapping occasionally.
| adolph wrote:
| > When on earth did we get into a world where that absolutely
| fundamental most basic task is now too burdensome to do with
| accuracy?
|
| It always has been this way since barcoded stock keeping units
| because of the problems identified by CAP Theorem [0]. Since
| the price data of an object must exist in two locations, shelf
| and checkout, the data is partitioned. It is also relatively
| expensive to update the shelf price since it depends on
| physical changes made by an unreliable human. Even if all
| stores used electronic price tags there will a very small lag,
| or a period in which prices are unavailable (or a period of
| unavailability like an overnight closure).
|
| It would be interesting to understand at what point of
| shelf/checkout accuracy would lead to what increases in overall
| prices [1]. That is to say that pricing information has a cost:
| a buyer must bring the item to checkout to find out the true
| cost in the case of authoritative checkout, or the clerk must
| walk to each shelf in the case of authoritative shelf.
|
| Once upon a time, each item in the store was labeled with a
| price tag and the clerk typed that tag into a tabulation device
| in order to calculate tax and total. The advent of the bar code
| lead to shelf label pricing since the clerk needn't read a
| price from each item, leading to the CAP Theory problem of
| today.
|
| I suppose that the future will bring back something similar to
| individual price tags in the form of individual RFID pricing.
| This way each individual item on a shelf can be priced in a way
| that is readable by the buyer and the seller in the same
| manner.
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency
| 1123581321 wrote:
| This is poor behavior by the stores. The solution will be
| conversion to eink shelf labels that sync like registers do.
| Realistically, the fines will not be increased to the point where
| increasing store staffing and training is cheaper. I don't know
| where Dollar General is in this process, but many other c-stores
| and grocery stores have implemented digital labels. Digital
| labels come with the temptation to experiment with more dynamic
| pricing which would also make it harder to shop on a budget.
| However, high staffing or fines also increases prices. I wish we
| had better retail in more of the United States, especially
| needier areas.
| morkalork wrote:
| I am convinced the wallmarts in Canada are doing dynamic with
| the eink price tags. I was in the same location twice in a week
| to pick up snacks for a gathering and the price of chips were
| 50% more on the Friday vs earlier in the week.
| netsharc wrote:
| Huh, with eInk prices, how do customers prove "Wait, the
| price on the shelf was different!", the store can just change
| the price as they go to double-check. As a customer you can
| take a picture of the price, but then it'll be an argument of
| "This picture is old/doctored/AI".
|
| Of course the chances of this sort of scam happening are
| probably not that high, but hey, considering the country is
| rotting more and more, from the top...
| gruez wrote:
| >Huh, with eInk prices, how do customers prove "Wait, the
| price on the shelf was different!", the store can just
| change the price as they go to double-check.
|
| Even with paper tags, the store can't get someone to change
| the price while you're waiting at the cashier for a
| "manager" to show up?
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I believe they may in the US, too. Anecdotally, I bought all
| of the Dr Thunder Zero Sugar at one store twice, and they
| bumped it about 20% for a few weeks after that. They didn't
| change the other generic sodas' prices.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Seems shortsighted for a retail business since people will
| only need to get burned once or twice to stop showing up.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| For people to vote with their wallet, there has to be an
| alternative. In "dead" markets where there is only one
| realistic alternative, whoever holds the monopoly can do
| whatever the fuck he wants, captive audience.
|
| And no, it's not possible to compete as a startup against
| Walmart or any other of the corporate giants (and not just
| in retail, it's valid across industries) - alone because
| the sheer scale of Walmart allows them to extort insanely
| cheap pricing out of vendors. Walmart can sell for far
| cheaper than any mom and pop store can acquire.
| iinnPP wrote:
| This happens at Walmart Canada all the time. The policy there is
| to slash 10$ off shelf price (or free for anything 10 or less).
|
| Since COVID, Walmart has stopped having immediate fixes of the
| problem.
|
| Since 2020, I have accumulated about $1200 in free merchandise
| using the above. Almost always food.
| paulcole wrote:
| Publix in the southeast US will give you anything that rings up
| wrong for free. I shopped there for 20+ years and only remember
| getting a handful of things free.
| modzu wrote:
| what's the point of this hit piece? isnt that frying pan with a
| sticker price of $10 and rung up at $12 still $50 anywhere else?
| paulcole wrote:
| Is it a hit piece if it's true lol?
| jrmg wrote:
| I don't think this is true. Even if pricing in the shelves is
| accurate, in my experience Dollar General is typically a little
| more expensive than a normal mid-range supermarket (or e.g.
| Amazon) for most things.
| modzu wrote:
| then why do poor people shop there? is the idea dollar
| general is strategically misleading them to see prices
| advertised lower than a normal supermarket but in fact they
| are higher? i didn't think the article was making that strong
| of a claim at all. it seemed more like, operations are
| minimal and staffing short (which in theory enables lower
| prices) and they linked the staffing issue with simply just
| not being on top of updating price changes on the shelves
| jrmg wrote:
| 1) Misleading advertising? Yes. Obviously this is true if
| you accept both that their prices are generally higher, and
| that they're advertising low prices.
|
| 2) They're in more convenient locations - often on the
| drive home already - and are smaller so are faster to get
| in and out of when you're hurrying to or from work.
|
| 3) If you're _not_ working, they're probably cheaper to
| _get to_, especially if you can't drive, because they're
| closer.
|
| I'm not as up in arms about this as some - in some respects
| this is just a new iteration of the corner store or bodega,
| which have always been a little more expensive than
| supermarkets (and often a little disorganized...) - but it
| is the truth.
| pilotneko wrote:
| Dollar General and Family Dollar are smaller stores that
| are generally the only option within a reasonable travel
| distance. Here in the South, you might be able to catch a
| bus to Wal-Mart, but it'll take 2-3X more time (1 hour
| instead of 20 minutes), so people go with the closer option
| even thought it is more expensive. No guarantees that Wal-
| Mart will be cheaper either.
| qingcharles wrote:
| In Chicago they closed the Wal-marts leaving only the
| Dollar Generals and Dollar Trees as the only walkable
| stores.
| pwg wrote:
| > then why do poor people shop there?
|
| While the typical viewpoint is that "poor people" shop
| there, that's actually somewhat of a misnomer.
|
| Most dollar stores in the US are located in rural
| locations, and in part because a lot of rural population is
| also "lower income" they get the appearance of "only the
| poor shop there". But the part the folks who label the
| stores as "for the poor" often overlook is the "ruralness"
| aspect. That dollar store might only be a five to ten
| minute drive away to grab something, meanwhile the Walmart
| or Target or other, that likely has the better deal (the
| 128oz of Tide for 9.99 vs the 8oz of Tide for $1.50) is a
| forty-five minute drive away one way. So couple 1.5 hours
| round trip commute, plus fuel costs for that 1.5 hours, and
| you start to see why folks would more likely shop at the
| dollar store vs. the store that actually gives them the
| better deal overall.
|
| That's partly the "magic" of the dollar stores for
| corporate. They sprout up like weeds in rural areas much
| like Starbucks sprout up on every corner in cities. And
| they capture sales largely because by sprouting up like
| weeds, they are a shorter round-trip drive to grab sometime
| (esp. to grab those one or two things you forgot last
| weekend when you /did/ make the 1.5 hour round trip drive
| to go to the nearest Walmart for the better deals). These
| store's sales largely come from the 7-11/Starbucks method
| in the city: convenience.
|
| And couple the above with the fact that in rural USA, there
| is effectively zero public transportation and very little
| in the form of uber/cab companies, and so if one does not
| have a car, one may be stuck shopping at the dollar store
| 5-10 minutes away even if one knows the stores are gouging.
| jancsika wrote:
| Could work like this:
|
| 1. You help your friend wash the dishes and notice their
| hefty, 5-quart stainless steel pot. You look it up on Amazon
| and it's like $50.
|
| 2. At $store, you see something that looks like that size and
| style of pot, but for only $10. What a steal! It's even
| _ultralight_ so it should be easier to load in the
| dishwasher...
|
| * _Several months later*_
|
| 3. Your pot is all warped to hell, making it difficult to
| cook evenly. But your friend's pot is probably fine for the
| next few decades if not longer. (Note: if this were an oven
| pan the warping would make it dangerous to use.)
|
| 4. To add insult to injury, $store got two more of your
| dollars just because.
|
| I picked the 5-quart pot because I've seen one of these with
| my own eyes.
|
| In any case, OP would have been better off paying me $38 for
| nothing but crushing their dream of buying a decent quality
| $10 frying pan.
| analog8374 wrote:
| Happened to me yesterday. Haagendaz ice cream. $4 on the shelf,
| $5 at the register.
| spwa4 wrote:
| If it says $4 on the shelf and you pay $4 at the register and
| walk out with the goods, that's a 100% legal sale and not
| theft. Not even if it was a mistake on the part of some
| employee (and it's not the employee's fault either, by the way)
| masfuerte wrote:
| It literally is the employee's fault but they are not legally
| liable for it.
| spwa4 wrote:
| An employee is generally only liable if they purposefully
| sabotage their employer's business. So a mistake doesn't
| cut it.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| And that's effectively an impossibly high bar in the
| typical mundane cases though.
| gruez wrote:
| >If it says $4 on the shelf and you pay $4 at the register
| and walk out with the goods, that's a 100% legal sale and not
| theft.
|
| Source? What happens if somebody stuck a $1 sticker on a ps5?
| Does that mean you can walk out paying $1 for it, even if the
| cashier corrects you? What if it's not something absurd but a
| plausible good deal, like $50 off?
| mminer237 wrote:
| The store is under no legal obligation to sell it to you,
| just like you're not obligated to buy it for that price.
| Depending on the situation, that might be false advertising
| they could get in trouble for, and obviously you're not
| committing a crime if you don't know the real price, but if
| someone says "oops, that's a mistake", and you take it anyway
| and give less money, that is theft in most states.
| firefax wrote:
| I had a clerk flip out on me a while back at a Dollar Tree
| because I wanted a charge for a dollar -- it rang up as 1.25.
| They rolled their eyes and told me not everything is a dollar,
| and I maintained that absent pricing stickers indicating
| otherwise, the default is a dollar. When I pointed out another
| way to look at it is it's a twenty five percent price
| discrepancy, someone came out of an office and literally screamed
| at me and chased me out of the store for "causing a problem",
| telling me that if I'm going to cause problems, so will she.
|
| I wasn't cursing or yelling, just calmly making the points I made
| above as the employees took a dive bar approach to customer
| service...
|
| It doesn't surprise me at all that this kind of thing is
| intentional -- they're banking on you not walking out without the
| item having carried it to the checkout.
| aimor wrote:
| "the default is a dollar"
|
| There is no default price.
| firefax wrote:
| It's called "dollar tree" for a reason, historically prices
| were and are a dollar unless otherwise noted.
| tokai wrote:
| They went up to $1.25 in '21 I think. It was extensively
| cover by the press.
| firefax wrote:
| >They went up to $1.25 in '21 I think. It was extensively
| cover by the press.
|
| I'd love to see a citation on that, since I _think_ you
| 're mistaken -- there's plenty of things that are still a
| dollar, mostly stuff like packages of napkins or plastic
| cups, cards and other sundries.
|
| (What was extensively covered was that they were no
| longer a "everything is a dollar" store.)
| bell-cot wrote:
| Citations:
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/grocery/shopping/2025/12/0
| 4/d...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/dollar-tree-raises-some-
| pric...
|
| https://www.the-sun.com/money/14719523/dollar-tree-
| sneaky-co...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I can't cite details, but I believe that case law has settled
| this many times.. When a customer enters a commercial
| business, there are implied contracts that are enforceable..
| I am thinking of restaurants first. I believe it is the
| responsibility of the goods and services provider to show
| prices accurately and honor them, and variations of that are
| well-understood in court. These kind of transactions are
| common for thousands of years in the West.
| hamdingers wrote:
| Even if they accurately charged shelf prices, these places are
| still a ripoff targeting the vulnerable. The list price is low
| but the per-unit price is astronomical compared to grocery store
| prices.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| time value of money
|
| we don't complain that the per unit cost at target is higher
| than at costco
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Because it's very rare that Target crowds out the only Costco
| that sells produce in a 20 mile radius leaving only boxed
| shit food for people to buy.
| neilv wrote:
| The "dollar stores" vary.
|
| I've been able to find good deals on some things at Dollar
| Tree. Usually the good deals were a smaller quantity of a
| normal-quality brand-name item. I mostly avoid the substandard
| quality items. But even sometimes substandard is OK if, say,
| you want to make your political demonstration sign on white
| foamcore (much cheaper than the art supply store, and you don't
| care if it's smaller, thinner, or outgassing) rather than on an
| Amazon shipping box.
|
| There was a Family Dollar across from a large public housing
| project here, where I also went looking for deals, but the
| shelf prices looked like a convenience store. I didn't find out
| whether they were fraudulently charging even more at the
| register like this article describes. (I hope it closed because
| the residents knew there was an affordable Market Basket a
| 20-30 minute walk away, over the city line and train tracks,
| and they were able to get there and find the time for it.)
| analog31 wrote:
| >>> rather than on an Amazon shipping box.
|
| My wife attended a political protest, and said she noticed
| signs made from my employer's shipping boxes.
| neilv wrote:
| That's great, and a mix of all kinds of signs is to great
| effect. (People from all sorts of demographics using
| whatever means they can to be heard.)
|
| Sometimes the sign-makers are artistically inclined, and
| may have access to better materials.
|
| The most memorable example was at the political
| demonstrations (and counter-demonstrations) leading up to
| the Massachusetts constitutional convention that legalized
| gay marriage. For the State House one I photographed
| (learning photojournalism on the side), the anti-gay-
| marriage people were mostly bused in, including a pair of
| angry-looking old nuns in black full habit, and handed out
| the same ugly stock sign. (There's an obvious joke that
| they couldn't find a graphic designer who was sympathetic
| to the anti-gay cause.) Separated from them, across a
| street was a huge counter-protest, with an ocean of all
| sorts of creative, colorful, and positive handmaid signs,
| held by generally good-natured and thoughtful looking
| people.
| adrr wrote:
| Have you ever been to a dollar store? Its much cheaper for the
| same items than a regular grocery store. Also not everyone
| needs a Costco sized tub of mayo. You test it yourself go by a
| standard sized candy bar at safeway/alberstons and then at a
| dollar store. Bottle of coke. Birthday card. Better yet compare
| the cost spices. Try to buy bay leaves at regular grocery store
| for under $5.
| hamdingers wrote:
| Candy bars and soda sure whatever. Look at essentials. The
| dollar store near me charges $1.99 for 8oz of Tide, the
| Albertsons a single block further charges $9.99 for 84oz, the
| dollar store is over double the cost. It's the same story
| with soap, cleaning products, etc. A tiny container for cheap
| feels like a deal if you can't do the math, but it's not.
| Feel free to "test it yourself."
|
| I'm lucky in that I have a real grocery store nearby to
| compare to. If you live in a food desert where these big
| chains have driven out all competition you wouldn't have a
| choice.
| tyre wrote:
| It's not only the math but access to cash. Families living
| paycheck-to-paycheck struggle to make long-term
| investments. Paying 5x for larger quantities may pay off in
| the long-term, but if you're struggling to make ends meet
| and stretch dollars _today_ , it might be overwhelming.
| terminalshort wrote:
| And what's the problem with that? You get a discount for
| buying larger amounts of basically everything.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Dollar stores are crowding out grocery stores in areas
| that only have the clientele to support one grocery
| store. They sell only higher margin, long shelf-life shit
| food, whereas real grocery stores have to carry produce
| which cuts into margins considerably cause it goes bad.
| So it's easier for them to stay open. And they create
| food deserts there. They are a fucking scourge for small
| towns.
| yunohn wrote:
| Did you know you can save even more buying B2B/wholesale?
|
| Sometimes it is more about the upfront cost and/or
| resulting storage space needed, than pure price efficiency.
| thfuran wrote:
| Spices are pretty much universally horribly overpriced at
| grocery stores.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I lived for an entire year out of just Dollar General and
| Dollar Tree. In some rough areas they are the only stores where
| you can buy groceries, so they have very clear monopolies.
| There _are_ good value products, and like everything these days
| you have to use their apps to get the best offers. Also, the
| Dollar General app lets you check the price of everything
| before you take it to the counter. They regularly have items
| marked up at 1 cent.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Yup. Dollar General is worse than a convenience store like
| 7-11, it's an expensive _inconvenience_ store.
|
| And we need more local co-op grocery stores like Berkeley Bowl,
| the Davis Co-op, and ATX Wheatsville.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I have yet to visit a co-op that had cheaper than grocery
| store prices. Every single one focused on quality over cost
| savings.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| People usually understand this, but realize driving 10 minutes
| to dollar tree for a few items is preferable to driving 30
| minutes to cheaper shop
| kube-system wrote:
| While that _can_ be bad, sometimes you come out ahead after
| accounting for spoilage, time, and travel.
|
| Sometimes I pay higher unit prices at a dollar store
| intentionally because they offer smaller package sizes not
| offered elsewhere and I only need the smaller amount. I could
| get a much better unit price at another store but would waste
| the rest of the product.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Speaking of travel, that's why I go for them.
|
| If I'm going for a multi-day stay somewhere and I don't want
| to deal with annoying mini bottles of hotel soap, I'll just
| pop into a Dollar Whatsit for a small bottle of something
| suitable at my destination.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The list price is low but the per-unit price is astronomical
| compared to grocery store prices.
|
| The problem is, so is material cost and handling effort. Say, a
| 2 liter bottle of soda compared to 10x 200 mL. Same amount of
| soda, but more handling required for stocking, inventory
| management (aka, make sure there is no soda expiring on the
| shelf) and finally scanning it over the cash register, and more
| packaging material.
|
| Larger units of _anything_ will always be cheaper than small
| units.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Saying it only targets the vulnerable because of high unit
| prices is like saying the local gas station is a rip off that
| only targets the vulnerable because prices are higher.
|
| I lived in a city that's in North Metro Atlanta (Johns Creek)
| where the median household income was $160K. There was a Dollar
| General right by a Publix. People still went in the Dollar
| General for little things where the small packages that you
| could buy was feature and not a bug.
|
| We still stop by the dollar store for snacks sometimes because
| it is convenient just to get things to pack for a flight. It's
| especially popular for tourists in Orlando where I live
| paulcole wrote:
| > North Carolina law caps penalties at $5,000 per inspection,
| offering retailers little incentive to fix the problem.
| "Sometimes it is cheaper to pay the fines," said Chad Parker, who
| runs the agency's weights-and-measures program.
|
| Well, there's your problem.
| paultopia wrote:
| At a certain point we have to acknowledge that a huge share of
| our economy is just raw predation.
| swatcoder wrote:
| We might also acknowledge that a pretty significant share of
| people do know that already and just shrug their shoulders to
| it, convinced that it's better to allow for that than do
| anything about it.
|
| There's been a lot of work put into distilling "free market"
| into its most radical interpretation, and lots of people just
| aren't open to bringing much nuance or pragmatism to bear upon
| it any more. Many lessons learned painfully in late 19th and
| early 20th century have been forgotten and the counterweight
| and containment policies that they earned now tend to get
| ignored or dismantled.
| c-linkage wrote:
| Always has been.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| It really wasn't this bad in the past on a whole. There were
| plenty of bad actors, but EVERY actor wasn't bad.
|
| Just look at food recipes American corporations feed to
| Americans, and their different recipes for Europe that look
| more like the American recipes circa the 1990s. Everything in
| America is optimised to the max permissible bad action.
| exasperaited wrote:
| There is one overriding difference between US culture and
| European culture (and to a fading extent, British culture).
|
| In the EU and UK, shame still motivates better behaviour.
|
| Every single problem the USA has comes down to the fact
| that shame, in the USA, stopped functioning in the late
| 1970s.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| And somehow instead of trying to make it better, there are
| never ending attempts to make it even worse somehow ( if some
| of the patents are to believed ). I honestly sometimes wonder
| if some of the stuff is not in place already only because
| public reaction if all those were plopped in place in one go.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Well, why don't the ethical non-predators open up shops in
| economically disadvantaged areas and offer non-predatory
| prices? The margins must be huge if they really are predators.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| The loot is already spoken for by complements and embedded in
| real estate prices, stock prices, etc.
|
| Hobbes arguments can rationalize any Nash Equilibrium.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Isn't it just the predators that care about stock price to
| enrich themselves? Couldn't a co-op exist which offered
| non-predatory pricing and didn't try to maximize their
| stock price constantly? And real estate in destitute rural
| areas is generally dirt cheap.
|
| Of course this could be offered. But, no one wants to do it
| because it's a thankless job. And if you're going to do a
| thankless job, you'd probably rather get paid a lot of
| money to do it than very little
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| You're ducking the argument. The loot from predatory
| practices is quickly absorbed not just by the single
| player perpetuating them, but by their complements in the
| economic network -- complements which a competitor would
| have to deal with on the loot-enriched terms, which turn
| launders exploitation into a "necessity" and transforms
| any charity into a weakness that will ensure your
| replacement. That's what Nash Equilibrium is, and it's an
| elementary result of game theory that Nash Equilibrium
| can lie very far from the global optimum. Even the global
| minimum can be a Nash Equilibrium. We should aspire to do
| better.
| conrs wrote:
| Good question, was on my mind too. The problem I could see is
| Walmart style - the predator will beat the prices of the non-
| predator down until the non-predator goes out of business,
| then raise their prices again.
|
| They can do this because they are operating in other areas
| with predatory prices, giving them the ability to operate at
| a loss, and relying on the fact that at least some of those
| areas are not being challenged by non-predators.
|
| Everybody seems to be playing the game right in this
| scenario. Interesting to try to come up with a good counter.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Does this actually happen? If a community opened up a co-op
| shop that started eating into the revenue of a dollar
| store, would the dollar store company try to fight back, or
| would they just exit that market?
|
| Yes, I guess well capitalize companies could offer
| unrealistically low prices, but on the other hand, any kind
| of co-op or community driven organization has the benefit
| of not needing the margins. Dollar store investors are
| there to make a buck, if their capital isn't getting
| reasonable returns will ultimately exit the business and
| move somewhere else.
| conrs wrote:
| Cooperatives do not get rid of the net negative cycle.
| Ultimately whatever the benevolent entity ends up being,
| it becomes a contest of who can bear to lose more money.
|
| Cooperatives distribute the losses but it is still a
| money pit.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Yeah. Why do I have to pay a plumber to install gas appliances?
| It's just a protectionist racket.
|
| Point is, it's easy to screech "predation" or whatever but the
| problem is that every one of these things has some
| justification that can be used in the abstract.
|
| It does legitimately cost more to run a store like Dollar
| General than Walmart so the same can of beans has to cost more
| on their shelf for the same margin.
|
| How much more, how much is justified? I don't know.
| paultopia wrote:
| A justification for lying to poor people about the prices of
| things they're trying to buy? Do tell.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I know we're all idiots here because that's what easy tech
| money does to people but retail margins are razor thin. You
| can't just make thoughtless trite statements about what
| they "should" do because a few percent here and there is
| the difference between red and black and red means prices
| go up. I'm sure they're happy to not invest in accuracy
| when it makes them money but there's a pretty wide gulf
| between being sloppy because it suits you and actively
| making a business out of deceit.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I experienced this first hand maybe a year ago when I randomly
| walked into a dollar general to get something, their prices often
| times are pretty close to the "regular" versions of the product,
| but packaged specifically for dollar stores.
|
| I get why people shop at them in rural places because that's the
| only shop within 10-20 miles but in cities it makes no sense. Had
| prices been 20-30% cheaper but in a smaller size it would still
| be a ripoff but an understandable one, but often times I saw
| products that were priced just 3-5% below their standard
| counterparts while giving you maybe 30%-50% of the product.
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| Every store has some stuff that is overpriced compared to peers
| and some stuff that is underpriced. Dollar stores make their
| money more on drastic understaffing (leading to the issue in
| the article) and national scale than they do on being a
| consistently worse value. They have the cheapest freeze dried
| strawberries by weight you can get anywhere other than making
| them yourself.
| silisili wrote:
| Same. My city has a Walmart, Publix, Food Lion, Kroger, and
| Aldi. Yet they keep building dollar stores, I think there's now
| 5 within 10 miles of my house. They all seem to do decent
| traffic, which baffles me. The stores are a mess, items
| disheveled everywhere, and rare to see more than a single
| person working. Really depressing places, I cannot figure out
| their appeal.
| parpfish wrote:
| an interesting contrast that i think about a lot:
|
| - in rural america, there are dollar stores everywhere that
| overcharge for small items. people treat them as a necessary evil
| and begrudgingly shop there.
|
| - in nyc, there are corner bodegas everywhere that overcharge for
| small items. they are generally seen as beloved neighborhood
| institutions.
|
| so... what's the difference? corporate owned vs family owned?
| length of time in community? presence of cute cat at the
| register?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Once upon a time I lived near the Prague city centre, and if
| the intent of such a corner shop is to rip off tourists and
| one-time visitors, the locals don't mind - at least as long as
| cheaper alternatives off the most notorious areas exist and are
| usable for them (Lidl etc.)
|
| Quite to the contrary, the locals are sometimes happy to have
| such overcharged options at hand, for example if they are
| throwing a party and find out that they are short on
| vodka+cigs, and it is 1 am and all the regular shops are
| closed.
| thenewwazoo wrote:
| Bodegas charge you a little bit more because a real human owner
| accepts the risk of serving a small community in exchange for
| being part of that community, and you pay that extra in order
| to make their existence possible.
|
| Dollar Generals charge you a little bit more because a huge
| chain has driven out all the competition and you have no
| choice. The people who work there do not benefit from the extra
| you pay, and the owners are not members of the community.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| There was no competition in many places dollar stores
| operate. They moved into those places specifically because
| they were underserved by larger retailers.
| sejje wrote:
| I agree, at least in my area.
|
| Two neighboring dollar stores just went out of business in
| a town I commute through. The culprit? A new Harp's grocery
| store a block away.
| bombcar wrote:
| The dollar store in my town is barely holding on - the
| competition? A Walmart across the street.
|
| The only thing keeping it afloat is literally balloons I
| feel. Walmart doesn't sell helium inflated ones.
| leipert wrote:
| Probably ,,only store that's in my vicinity" in rural areas vs.
| ,,if that bodega sucks, I go to another". So one is a necessity
| which overcharges, the other a convenience which overcharges.
| analog31 wrote:
| In both cases they charge a little more because the next store
| charges a little more too.
| gessha wrote:
| Because in NYC I pass by tens of the bodegas on the way to work
| and I can shop at any one of them. I can also shop at Aldi's,
| Trader Joe's, Costco, what have you.
|
| You said it well yourself - "begrudgingly". With so many
| options and price points, I don't have to begrudgingly shop at
| bodegas. I do it happily if it serves my goal of getting a
| single can of Coke. If I want to get a whole stack of them, I'd
| happily get them at Costco. Options are great when you have
| them.
| gdulli wrote:
| Minimum wage in NY is $15.50, in Kansas it's $7.25. The
| overcharging in rural areas is not adjusted downward for lower
| wages. But I wouldn't shop at a bodega and don't find it
| virtuous there either.
| woodruffw wrote:
| This article is about something subtly different than
| overcharging: it's about consumers believing that they're
| paying one amount (the list/sticker price), and being charged a
| different amount (typically higher in the company's favor) at
| checkout.
|
| In my experience, this doesn't really happen with bodegas: they
| might be overpriced in the "this is a bad deal for milk" sense,
| but they don't misrepresent their sticker prices to any degree
| that I've ever experienced.
|
| (But also, I don't think bodegas _do_ categorically overcharge
| in NYC. I think they 're about the same as grocery stores, i.e.
| there's a large amount of internal variation in pricing because
| people generally don't want to make multiple bodega pit stops
| just to save $2.00 on eggs.)
| bluedino wrote:
| Hey, Starbucks charges $3.50 for a cookie, I could buy 4 at the
| local bakery or two at the farmers market for that much (and
| get a better cookie).
| ccamrobertson wrote:
| One simple solution here (and for all sorts of legislated fines
| and thresholds) would be to tie them to inflation; it looks like
| the fine of $5,000 dates to the early 90s.
| eudamoniac wrote:
| As someone who typically only enters a Whole Foods or a Home
| Depot for her retail experiences, the one time I entered a Dollar
| General, I was struck by how depressing it felt. I would never go
| back into one. Yes, I know how out of touch this sounds.
| linsomniac wrote:
| I think that's deliberate: you walk into a dollar store and
| think "they aren't spending a dime on the shopping experience,
| so they must be passing that dime onto me."
| ghaff wrote:
| I have a very, very convenient Walmart including a pharmacy so
| I do go in from time to time especially for standardized
| purchases. But I don't really like it. And I poked my head into
| an adjacent Aldi once and retreated. Otherwise not really worth
| the headache.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Dollar stores are the new neighborhood "outlet stores" compared
| to outlet stores of yesteryear (remote locations for not much/any
| savings). They're actually glorified convenience stores while
| also not being proper substitutes for grocery stores in food
| deserts. Most US grocery stores are also now rip-offs like
| convenience stores were, while big box stores are somewhat
| savings stores now... f'kin' turbo inflation.
|
| I don't know about the feasibility of government grocery stores,
| but I'm pretty sure the entire food supply chain would benefit
| from massively changing to the employee-/customer-/supplier-owned
| co-op model and get megacorps and private equity out of the
| normalized deviancy of predatory money extraction for essential
| goods and services.
| danaris wrote:
| "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was
| because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for
| example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty
| dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK
| for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard
| gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good
| boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty
| dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry
| in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap
| boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same
| time and would still have wet feet."
|
| "This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-
| economic unfairness."
|
| - Terry Pratchett, _Men at Arms_
|
| ----
|
| Dollar stores, even when they're _actually_ giving you low prices
| (and not just charging $1 for 1 of something that you could get a
| 3-pack of for $2 elsewhere), are often selling lower-quality
| versions of the products they sell--sometimes versions
| specifically made for them, but without any visible difference in
| packaging.
| phantasmish wrote:
| > are often selling lower-quality versions of the products they
| sell
|
| Clothes brands do this too.
|
| Clothes at the outlet store aren't the same as clothes at
| Dillards, what's stocked at a struggling Macy's in a relatively
| poor area may be different from what's available for the same
| brand at Macy's in Manhattan, and all that may not be the same
| as what's in their flagship stores.
|
| _Sometimes_ they make it semi-obvious provided you learn their
| secret label language (Polo by Ralph Lauren, Chaps by Ralph
| Lauren, Ralph Lauren Purple Label, and about a half-dozen other
| major variants, for example). They do this so they can sell
| shit to unsophisticated consumers at a large mark-up for the
| name, riding on the reputation and clout of the good versions
| of what they sell (elsewhere, at even higher prices).
| tialaramex wrote:
| Yes, being poor is expensive and people just don't seem to grok
| that
|
| Take energy. I'm not _rich_ but I 'm comfortable, my energy is
| paid for in an efficient way, I can shop around easily for the
| best rates for my lifestyle and so on. But if I had no money
| they'll fit a pay-per-use meter, they charge more money to fill
| that meter, if I can't fill it or forget to then the power goes
| out - _and_ it 's inconvenient to use it.
|
| Years ago now I had a dispute with the water utility. I refused
| to pay, so, they eventually concluded that fixing their error
| was too difficult so they just created a new account starting
| from zero and wrote off all the costs for the disputed period
| entirely. If I'd been poor, they'd have threatened to cut off
| the supply (they're only threatening, fortunately it's not
| actually legal here to cease supplying clean water to poor
| people like they're not even animals) and sent scary people to
| demand payment.
| absoluteunit1 wrote:
| Dollarama Inc. stock price is up 273% in the last 5 years.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Listen, I know we all love to circle jerk about how dollar stores
| are evil, but you can walk into just about any regional chain
| supermarket and replicate the same exercise and get about the
| same results.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Can you? I think the implicit counterclaim in TFA is that other
| supermarkets/stores don't fail state pricing inspections nearly
| as often. If you have evidence/articles showing that TFA has
| cherry-picked dollar stores for criticism, that would be
| helpful to share.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I've got one local grocery store where the meat prices are
| sometimes off and another where it's the bakery. The fact
| that it seems to be confined to certain departments makes
| think it has a lot to do with the quantity and quality of
| labor being applied. And dollar stores being dollar stores
| they apply the cheapest and they apply it sparingly. Not that
| that excuses it but it at least explains it.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| What a rude, dismissive comment about a very real issue
| affecting real people.
| rtp4me wrote:
| Sorry, real people who are on a real (strict) budget pay
| attention to the price of goods when they shop. If you are
| really hurting from a $3 overcharge, chances are you pay very
| close attention to the register receipt and bring it to the
| store's attention. Regardless of income, my wife and I
| routinely scrutinize the register receipt. Force of habit.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I wish I could be surprised and I can see this happening in many
| places. This type of 'fraud' was predicted when we allowed the
| stores to stop marking items with the price.
|
| Many places were I shop, hardly any products are lined up with
| the price attached to the shelves, plus the descriptions of some
| items are confusing due to the multiple names for the same thing.
|
| Time to force stores to mark each item with the price once again.
| exasperaited wrote:
| Cash strapped, but also presumably more likely than the general
| population to be innumerate or have dyscalculia or dyslexia.
|
| It's the same bullshit that allows discount prices on Black
| Friday or during January sales to be completely misleading.
|
| In the UK we are much tougher on this kind of manipulative
| pricing, but you still find manipulative things, like being
| unable to find the price-per-100g on discounted items and
| "clubcard" items, or bulk buys that end up having higher unit
| costs and yet seem not to be errors.
| securingsincity wrote:
| 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.
| kube-system wrote:
| I can't help imagining that the likelihood of successfully
| arguing for a free product with a DG cashier is slim to none.
| hippo22 wrote:
| 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.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Yeah, but someone living paycheck-to-paycheck and shopping
| at dollar stores is likely not someone who can afford
| filing a lawsuit.
| bombcar wrote:
| If it's common enough it sounds like it could be some fun
| pastime for lawyers.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > 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.
| zdragnar wrote:
| 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.
| js2 wrote:
| 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]. e.g.
|
| [^2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Bestbuy/comments/17ae8l2/ver
| izon_sa...
|
| [^3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bestbuy/comments/1buemp5/why
| _is_it_...
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| I bet you didn't try that this year when every single
| part of the federal government is actively trying to harm
| people.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| We have those agencies as well. They've been steadily
| gutted since their inception, and the courts (well, _the_
| Court) don 't care.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| You may be referring to the CFPB but states tend to have
| their own agencies that have nothing to do with SCOTUS or
| the federal government.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| And yet, here we are, with the terrible state of affairs
| for consumers.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| 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.
| sejje wrote:
| Call the police to come deal with...mispriced items? That's
| not the job of police, sorry. Not in the US anyway.
| almostgotcaught wrote:
| this is a tort not a criminal act - cops wouldn't/couldn't
| do anything.
| gruez wrote:
| Not to mention that cops only have powers to arrest/issue
| tickets, not to adjudicate disputes. This isn't Judge
| Dredd where cops can mete out judgements as they see fit.
| That's the whole reason why we have courts and judges.
| cormorant wrote:
| 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.
| doctor_radium wrote:
| 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?
| regera wrote:
| 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.
| calmbonsai wrote:
| Kudos! This is beautifully succinct, elegant, and accurate
| writing.
| sema4hacker wrote:
| Has private equity ever done anything good for anyone outside
| of the investors?
| regera wrote:
| 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!
| jahsome wrote:
| To me, that is an utterly hilarious question to be posing on
| this website of all places.
| excalibur wrote:
| That's a good point. Private Equity is a fairly broad
| umbrella term that encompasses a variety of investment
| strategies and business models.
|
| The type of Private Equity that most here are referring to
| is the type that buys up existing businesses, squeezes as
| much money as possible out of them, and throws their
| desecrated corpses in the gutter. These "investors" are a
| blight on society, this activity should be criminalized,
| they should be in prison.
|
| But there are a lot of well-meaning investors who do great
| things for society that also get stuck with the same label.
| chongli wrote:
| 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).
| hellotheretoday wrote:
| 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
| luckylion wrote:
| "shouldn't be profit oriented" is another way to say
| "costs will quickly grow exponentially", because there's
| absolutely no incentive not to let them.
|
| Is anyone better off if elderly care becomes too
| expensive to offer at scale?
| venturecruelty wrote:
| How do I travel to the alternate universe where private
| equity apparently makes things better instead of worse?
| VerifiedReports wrote:
| Tell that to former JoAnn Fabrics customers.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| They should have paid more for the fabric, I guess.
| Private equity tends to loot things on the way down.
| Joann was on the way out regardless.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| 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.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| Galaxy brain: both are bad, although at least a public
| company is, ostensibly, trying to make a good or provide a
| service (lol).
| gruez wrote:
| >although at least a public company is, ostensibly,
| trying to make a good or provide a service (lol).
|
| /s?
| venturecruelty wrote:
| No? Companies aren't about making things anymore, they're
| about stock buybacks and making as much money as possible
| while doing as little as possible (or selling our data).
| That's why the refrigerators have ads and break after two
| years. At least private equity is more honest about being
| vulchers, whereas Kohler is going to look you dead in the
| eyes and try to convince you you need a toilet with a
| camera in it. What a joke.
| gruez wrote:
| >At least private equity is more honest about being
| vulchers,
|
| Again, what's the basis of this? Half the people in this
| thread seem to take it for granted that PE is somehow
| "worse" than public companies, but can't seem to
| articulate why. The only legal difference between public
| companies and "private equity" is that the former has
| stricter reporting requirements and can be bought by non-
| accredited investors. There's nothing about "ostensibly,
| trying to make a good or provide a service" or whatever.
| CPLX wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| >Private equity is far worse. It's mean 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.
|
| ...as opposed to the average public company? An average
| company might have more "average joe" shareholders
| (almost by definition, because private equity is
| typically off limits to non-accredited investors), but
| outside of meme stocks, there's not enough of them to
| make a difference. The rest of the shareholders (eg.
| pension funds, insurance companies, endowments, family
| offices) can be assumed to behave like ruthless
| capitalists chasing the highest returns, regardless of
| whether the company is public or not.
| ksenzee wrote:
| If you've ever spoken to employees of a public company
| that was sold to private equity, you'll know how much of
| a difference there is. It is a significant difference.
| CPLX wrote:
| > The rest of the shareholders (eg. pension funds,
| insurance companies, endowments, family offices) can be
| assumed to behave like ruthless capitalists chasing the
| highest returns, regardless of whether the company is
| public or not.
|
| Right but they are seeking the highest returns as equity
| holders typically, usually through things like stock
| buybacks.
|
| Private equity firms have much more devious ways of
| looting the companies, like management fees, acquiring
| other portfolio companies, and various other tricks.
|
| If you've ever seen the Goodfellas scene where they bust
| out the nightclub, that's quite literally their business
| model.
| rs186 wrote:
| Let me explain this with a simple example:
|
| * If a company controlled by PE goes bankrupt,
| shareholders (PE) likely make a profit * But if a
| publicly listed company goes bankrupt, shareholders lose
| their money
|
| In other words, PEs almost never lose money, so they
| could extract the last bit of a company, even more short
| sighted than shareholders of a public company
| gruez wrote:
| >* If a company controlled by PE goes bankrupt,
| shareholders (PE) likely make a profit
|
| That's not necessarily a bad thing, or sign of anything
| sinister. If a business is failing, and you buy it for
| pennies on the dollar, and despite your best efforts it
| still goes under, so you liquidate it, you can still turn
| a profit if the price you paid is lower than what you got
| from liquidating it. That's not bad, because private
| equity (or anyone else, for that matter) isn't expected
| to operate as a charity. The only reason they're willing
| to stump up the cash to buy the business in the first
| place is the expectation that they'll make money. It's
| also not bad for the original owners either, because the
| fact that they hold to PE rather than someone else, or
| liquidating it, suggests that the PE offered a better
| deal than either.
|
| >But if a publicly listed company goes bankrupt,
| shareholders lose their money
|
| Often times yes, but sometimes not, eg. hertz.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| 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.
| eagleinparadise wrote:
| So I work in commercial real estate, obviously a large
| private equity influenced industry. I've worked in REPE and
| in other capacities.
|
| There's degrees of PE. Some good, fine, and some worse.
|
| Take real estate development. It's probably one of the
| suckiest businesses to be in. I know 3 developers who have
| committed suicide because when things go wrong, your entire
| life collapses (you put up all your assets in order to obtain
| construction loans). The litigation, brain damage, and risks
| are enormous. Increasingly, the payoff is awful (due to
| worsening legislation and NIMBYism and worse market
| condiditions)
|
| However, private equity in development I think is a good
| thing. When there are investors willing to put this money at
| risk, we get much needed construction of housing (see Austin,
| TX where rents are falling off a cliff due to over building).
|
| Now look at Los Angeles, which new permits are literally
| almost non-existent because LA is one of the most hostile
| places for developers. You can't make money in LA, so there's
| no capital available.
|
| Then you end up with "affordable" housing developers adding
| the only supply at $600-900k/unit costs vs the market rate
| developer at $300-600k/unit.
|
| ----
|
| On the other hand, "value add" private equity is much more
| suspicious. It's more cut throat, easier to end up in crony
| capitalist situations by operating with a "cut expenses,
| provide less, make big bucks" model. The people in this world
| are the kind of guys who have never done anything hard with
| their hands other than gotten a sore thumb from pounding too
| hard on their keyboards to adjust their excel model ("Mr. The
| Model is Always Right") too hard all night long.
|
| This is how we end up with old properties who get flipped 4x
| each being sold with "upside the seller was too stupid to
| take advantage of" and ending up in situations where tenants
| get priced out due to private equity seeking infinite growing
| returns. Oh and by the way, every previous owner did
| "lipstick on the pig" jobs because why not try to save costs
| and make your levered IRR 16% instead of 12%? You cannot show
| that kind of return when you promised 18%... then it'll make
| it harder to fundraise your next deal!
|
| This isn't to say that "value add" is a dirty business. We
| certainly need to balance the incentive to modernize and
| renovate properties. An d developers overbuilding isn't
| always a good thing.
|
| So its nuanced. I think people need to fairly give credit
| that there are both good and bad. The capital efficiency is
| real and produces real world outcomes since there is a strong
| financial incentive at the end of the door.
|
| But financial incentives sometimes bump up to issues causing
| harm in real life, which need to be recognized and called
| out.
| holysoles wrote:
| 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...
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > 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
|
| I'll bet 1 share that there are moves to get this admin to do
| away with the requirement.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| > _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.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Why is private equity different from any other form of
| organization? Publicly traded companies are even more
| addicted to getting revenue. Non-profits like universities
| may not have shareholders, but somehow the price of tuition
| keeps skyrocketing even faster than the prices at the dollar
| stores. And it's not like the religious charities have been
| pure.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Costco
| alephnerd wrote:
| 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
| jmspring wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| 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 1/2% of my shopping.
|
| But it'd be awful if my best shopping option was 15mi away.
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| joncp wrote:
| ... 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 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| >Membership fees account for the vast majority of net
| operating income for Costco
|
| This is financially illiterate because you're mixing
| revenue ("membership fees") with profit ("net operating
| income"). While it might be tempting to assume that
| membership fees is pure profit for them, it's not,
| because people only buy memberships because they're
| useful for something (ie. shopping at their stores).
| Therefore you can't strip that out from the other costs
| associated with operating a chain of warehouses.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It seems to amount to a similar principle, that their
| business model depends on repeat customers, and would
| fail if they lost trust.
|
| I much prefer this to stores that are happy to burn
| customers, never expecting to see them again.
| gruez wrote:
| >It seems to amount to a similar principle, that their
| business model depends on repeat customers, and would
| fail if they lost trust.
|
| You think dollar general is making $37.9B (in 2023) of
| annual revenue from one-off customers? Unless you're
| operating a tourist trap, or some sort of business that
| people only need a few times in their lifetimes (eg. real
| estate agents), most businesses rely on repeat customers.
| devilbunny wrote:
| It's kind of a meme; Costco's profits are almost exactly
| the same as their total revenue from membership fees,
| which leads people to think that the warehouses run at
| zero margin and the fees are their only profit source.
| The fees certainly give them room to run the sales at
| extremely low margins (though large grocers like Kroger
| only have something like 3% margins), but it wouldn't
| take a huge shift in purchasing patterns to change this
| coincidence. If all the people who _don't_ use their
| membership that much dropped them and those who use them
| were all large-scale buyers, they would have to increase
| their prices just to give themselves a bit of cushion.
| expedition32 wrote:
| Interesting. The Netherlands is no class society so rich or
| poor nobody has any goddamn shame to stand in line at the
| Action checkout if there's a good sale to be had.
|
| Seeing people in BMWs at the Aldi parking lot. Strange country.
| antonvs wrote:
| > cosplaying as poverty relief
|
| Does it really? Who says this, and who believes it?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| >> 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.
|
| ref: https://www.dollargeneral.com/hereforwhatmatters
| gruez wrote:
| >we're here to provide affordable and convenient access
| [...]
|
| You'd have to be incredibly naive to interpret that as
| "poverty relief".
| antonvs wrote:
| > search engine: 22 relevant results in 0.85s.
|
| Being able to understand what those results mean is the
| important part.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > 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.
| EnPissant wrote:
| Then why doesn't some other established brand open in the same
| area and undercut them?
| seizethecheese wrote:
| This comment section is full of allegations that dollar stores
| are predatory, yet when I look up their operating margins they
| are super low (4% for Dollar General, for example).
| venturecruelty wrote:
| Just because your margins are low doesn't mean you still aren't
| screwing over poor people.
| devilbunny wrote:
| It's a bit like payday loans; they are a bad financial deal,
| but the alternative is _no credit at all_ because the people
| who get them are high-risk borrowers and the costs associated
| with making and servicing a loan aren't radically different
| for $500 or $50k.
|
| Being poor is tough. But the low margins are a pretty good
| indicator that the alternative to shady businesses is simply
| not having businesses at all.
| rtp4me wrote:
| Yeah, queue the HN fake outrage about big companies and their
| C-Suite who are billionaires on the backs of the little people.
| So predictable.
|
| Fact is, Dollar General and similar stores provide a real value
| to people who live in rural areas. Yes, their prices may be
| higher for some goods, but that is the price you pay for the
| convenience they provide. People are free to drive another
| 20mins to a WalMart or another store to save $0.50 for the same
| can of corn or loaf of bred. And, people who are really on a
| budget actually scrutinize the register receipts to make sure
| they are paying the price listed on the shelf. They can
| immediately bring up the discrepancy to the staff.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > listed on the shelf at $5, rang up at $7.65. Bounty paper
| towels, shelf price $10.99, rang up at $15.50
|
| I'm sure the US obsession with not putting the actual price (tax
| included) on the shelf helps a lot with this. I would notice
| quite quickly if a store would systematically overcharge me in
| Europe. It'd be much harder in the US where I expect the price on
| the shelf to not match the price at checkout.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| Those prices aren't because of tax; even the highest sales tax
| wouldn't cause $10.99 paper towels to ring up as $15.50.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Yes, but the US consumers are conditioned to see one price
| and pay a higher price. You and I might see +40% and think
| "that's too high a percentage". Others see +something and
| think "just like every other time". If they even look - I'm
| sure these items are often in a cart with many other items.
| pwg wrote:
| The stores get away with it because even when ignoring the
| fact that tax is added after, few of the shoppers in these
| stores will remember the shelf price for a basket of 20+
| items from the store. They might remember one or two, but
| they won't remember (and therefore will not notice) enough
| of the shelf prices to notice the systematic overcharge at
| the register. In reality, a good number of the shoppers
| likely don't remember any of the prices from the shelf
| tags, and will not be mentally summing up what the final
| price should be, so those shoppers won't notice the
| discrepancy at all.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the problem is "companies try to screw over
| poor people", and not "the sticker price doesn't include
| the tax".
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Have the fines pay out to customers that report and suddenly the
| issue is gone.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Dollar stores have on average a 2% profit margin, just like
| grocery stores. They are not the villains here.
| bjackman wrote:
| This is like cheating in a golf match against a professional
| and then saying "I got the same score as my opponent, I am not
| the villain here".
| sejje wrote:
| I don't think it is, so maybe you can help me draw the
| parallels.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Do you think large dollar stores are faking or cheating their
| profit margin numbers?
| bombcar wrote:
| Especially since it's advantageous to adjust suppliers that
| you own to maintain tiny margins (who owns the land they
| rent, for example)
| dehrmann wrote:
| Not charging the best-advertised price is dishonest. It might
| also be in customers' best interest if the cost of keeping
| consistent price data on low-margin items costs more than
| whatever the inconsistency is. Or the answer might be that
| dollar stores sell too wide of a variety too cheaply on too
| low-margin product to play supermarket-style pricing games
| effectively.
| fencepost wrote:
| I believe Michigan has laws on the books that should be the model
| for this (the "Scanner law") - if you're overcharged at the
| register and the sale is completed, you have 30 days to get the
| price corrected _plus_ ten times the amount of overcharge
| (between $1 and $5). Paying you the 'bonus' is optional, but if
| they don't do so you can file a suit for the greater of your
| actual damages or $250 (in small claims on your own or regular
| court which allows up to $300 in attorney fees).
|
| An alternative would be to force stores with mischarge rates
| exceeding a specified level to close until they've completed a
| full audit of all shelf prices in the store but in some areas
| that could cause significant local hardship.
| cluckindan wrote:
| "Dollar General argued that when customers create accounts - for
| example, by downloading the company's mobile app - they agree to
| use arbitration to resolve disputes and forfeit the right to file
| class-action suits. The judge agreed."
|
| Let me guess, the mobile app provides discounts...?
| itchingsphynx wrote:
| 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...
|
| https://www.accc.gov.au/business/pricing/price-displays
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-12-07 23:00 UTC)