Earlier quoted context omitted.
They went up to $1.25 in '21 I think. It was extensively cover by the press.
>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.)
Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices
101–110 of 754 posts
Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
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.
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.
Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Always has been.
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.
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.
Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices
#104Happened to me yesterday. Haagendaz ice cream. $4 on the shelf, $5 at the register.
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)
>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?
Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices
#105“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 price…
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...
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.
Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices
#106This 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…
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.
Seems shortsighted for a retail business since people will only need to get burned once or twice to stop showing up.
Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
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.
Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices
#108"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 cou…
> 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).
Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
>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?
Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices
#110[deleted]