Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices • Hacker News Board

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#211

Post by gruez » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 10:38 PM UTC

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #197

antonvs wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cosplaying as poverty relief Does it really? Who says this, and who believes it?

>> 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

>we’re here to provide affordable and convenient access [...]

You'd have to be incredibly naive to interpret that as "poverty relief".

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#212

Post by sejje » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 10:38 PM UTC

IncreasePosts wrote: post #74

thenewwazoo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There was no competition in many places dollar stores operate. They moved into those places specifically because they were underserved by larger retailers.

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.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#213

Post by rtp4me » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 10:39 PM UTC

venturecruelty wrote: post #167

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.

What a rude, dismissive comment about a very real issue affecting real people.

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.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#214

Post by dehrmann » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 10:40 PM UTC

cm2012 wrote: post #186

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

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.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#215

Post by bombcar » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 10:40 PM UTC

bjackman wrote: post #189

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".

Especially since it’s advantageous to adjust suppliers that you own to maintain tiny margins (who owns the land they rent, for example)

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#216

Post by CPLX » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 10:41 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #185

CPLX wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#217

Post by fencepost » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 10:41 PM UTC

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.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#218

Post by GolfPopper » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 10:42 PM UTC

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #173

sema4hacker wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has private equity ever done anything good for anyone outside of the investors?

> 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 - inf…

>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.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#219

Post by gruez » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 10:42 PM UTC

almostgotcaught wrote: post #203

jkaplowitz wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

this is a tort not a criminal act - cops wouldn't/couldn't do anything.

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.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#220

Post by gruez » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 10:46 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #205

gruez wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 s…

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.

>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.