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Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

theguardian.com

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Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#181

Post by venturecruelty »

gruez wrote: post #160
venturecruelty wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Galaxy brain: both are bad, although at least a public company is, ostensibly, trying to make a good or provide a service (lol).

>although at least a public company is, ostensibly, trying to make a good or provide a service (lol). /s?

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.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#182

Post by pwg »

dotancohen wrote: post #174
venturecruelty wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#183

Post by mynameismon »

michaelmrose wrote: post #120
hippo22 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Yeah, but someone living paycheck-to-paycheck and shopping at dollar stores is likely not someone who can afford filing a lawsuit.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#184

Post by potato3732842 »

paultopia wrote: post #139
potato3732842 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A justification for lying to poor people about the prices of things they're trying to buy? Do tell.

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.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#185

Post by gruez »

CPLX wrote: post #171
gruez wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

>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.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#187

Post by potato3732842 »

woodruffw wrote: post #81
potato3732842 wrote: post #73

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.

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.

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.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#188

Post by jkaplowitz »

hippo22 wrote: post #112
securingsincity wrote: post #98

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 yo…

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.

Theoretically there is a third option, stay in the store near the cash register and call the police to come deal with it on the spot before the purchase. The problem is that they probably won't bother coming, and if they do, they won't come quickly enough to make it worth waiting for them given the amount of money at stake.

Edit: Yeah, I did say before the purchase, but I should have said after the purchase when they pay the legally correct price but the store accuses them of shoplifting and tries to detain them. And I know it's often infeasibly hard to pay the legally correct price from a logistical perspective without the cashier's cooperator, especially if you want to pay with a card. It is clearly possible to put at least the right amount of cash on the counter, ask for the change, and attempt to leave if they refuse, but that doesn't guarantee ever getting the change. Anyway, I did list this option as (purely) theoretical and not as actually practical.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#189

Post by bjackman »

cm2012 wrote: post #186

Dollar stores have on average a 2% profit margin, just like grocery stores. They are not the villains here.

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".

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#190

Post by gruez »

xingped wrote: post #163
gruez wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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.

>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.

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