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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

#511

Post by asdff »

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.

Ehh I disagree. "No competition" yet I bet every home in the area still had groceries in the kitchen before the dollar general opened.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#513

Post by gnulinux »

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.

You live in Massachusetts and speak from experience? Because this law seems to work quite well in MA as it's a particularly popular law.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#514

Post by maccard »

rtp4me wrote: post #468
hedora wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there’s a paper trail showing they authorized it, and the total amount of fraud is enough for felony charges (a few thousand bucks, I think), then yeah, throw their asses in prison, and make them refund the money they had the business steal out of their personal funds. I’m all for limited liability corporations, but if there is a smoking gun that shows you intentionally engaged in criminal activity, that should pi…

Do you honestly believe a senior exec at a company specifically said to charge the customer more than what the price on the shelf says? Chances are, in the world of computers and automation, mis-pricing just happens. Its a chance we all take as consumers. You just have to be mindful when shopping.

For all intents and purposes “mispricing” doesn’t just happen widely. This is a policy problem with the stores. The difference between an accident and fraud is intent - it’s pretty clear there’s systemic intent here.

> do you honestly believe a senior exec at a company specially said to charge the customer more than what the price on the shelf says

Yes. I 100% believe that a policy from management of a retail chain owned by PE would say “charge the till price not the sticker price”, and also separately “our policy is to ensure all prices are consistent by doing a price audit of every stickered item once per 6 months”. All that does is allegedly ensure they’re not ripping people off two days a year.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#515

Post by JumpCrisscross »

youarentrightjr wrote: post #459
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why bring up Revlon duties when as you say, their relevance is only during company acquisition or restructuring? It’s an exception that proves the rule. In that specific case, what you’re saying applies. In all others, it does not. > It's well established over hundreds of years of case law Where are you getting this from? > directors of public companies have to act in good faith to benefit the company (and therefor…

> Where are you getting this from? I seriously doubt you're operating sincerely in this thread, given your ability to cite Revlon. But on the off chance, start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co . > And nothing about public companies says they can’t be structured in a way that sometimes undermines some shareholders. See above.

> seriously doubt you're operating sincerely in this thread, given your ability to cite Revlon

I know about the topic and can correctly cite sources, herego I'm operating insincerely?

> start here [1]

You're citing a 1919 Michigan state court decision concerning the Ford Motor Company. Ford went public in 1956 [2]. The sole source you've cited is about a then-private company from over 100 years ago.

You said "there is a legal requirement for directors of public companies to act in the financial interests of all shareholders." That is wrong. It's doubly wrong in the context of public versus private companies, given it applies to all business corporations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

[2] https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/01/16/63-years-later-wha...

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#516

Post by Rechtsstaat »

jimmydddd wrote: post #440
coin wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Michigan in the 90s had a similar rule. Customer gets 10x the overcharge (up to $5 max). I can guarantee you they fixed the price immediately. Where I live there’s no such rule I can tell you no one is correcting the price when I point out that I got overcharged (they usually shrug with “it does that sometimes”).

"It does that sometimes." I guess for some reason the minimum wage cashier was not fully invested in maximizing the customer experience.

See: 'accountability sinks'[1]

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41891694]

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#517

Post by JumpCrisscross »

margalabargala wrote: post #453
gruez wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is a legal requirement for directors of public companies to act in the financial interests of all shareholders. In practice, and according to precedent, this means long term viability of the company, in other words, a sustained profitable business. All that means is that controlling shareholders can't use the company as a piggy bank and raid it to fund their other ventures. It doesn't mean the business has to…

Yes, that's the major difference between the public and PE companies that OP was highlighting. The owners of a public company can't raid it to fund other ventures. They have to sell it off to someone else to do that. Selling off a public company like that is generally not trivial and is not surprise sprung on shareholders.

> owners of a public company can't raid it to fund other ventures

This is a constant source of litigation in public and private companies alike. A recent prominent case on the public side was National Amusements constantly fucking up the sale of Paramount if it didn't have special goodies for Shari Redstone.

> Selling off a public company like that is generally not trivial and is not surprise sprung on shareholders

Merger law is largely state corporate law. If you have a Delaware C corporation, you're operating under more or less the same merger rules irrespective of how your stock is traded.

What may be misleading some folks is that in a private company, these deliberations are typically covered by NDAs. In public companies, it happens in the open. With private companies, someone needs to get pissed off enough to sue. Herego the understandable availability bias.

To drive home how misleading this purported delineation is, consider that some of the largest private equity managers (e.g. Blackstone and KKR) are themselves publicly traded.

Private equity has tons of issues. Tons. In some industries (e.g. healthcare) it shouldn’t exist. But this tripe about public companies having duties to shareholders which private companies don’t is nonsense.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#518

Post by lenlorijn »

rtp4me wrote: post #437
jeltz wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was investigated, the issue is that the fines are smaller than the profit. I would personally want to see things like this considered fraud and that it can result in prison sentences for executives and other people invovled in the decision making.

You want prison sentences for execs if you were charged $1.50 for a can of corn instead of $1.45? Surely you can't be serious.

Why is incarceration suddenly not an appropriate possible punishment for theft if it is done by someone in a suit. These are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars being swindled from poor people. Not a single 5 cent mistake as you try to make it out to be.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#519

Post by cryptonym »

fencepost wrote: post #217

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 o…

> force stores with mischarge rates exceeding a specified level to close

They'd leverage it as if it was an allowance and stay just below that rate.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#520

Post by cycomanic »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #501
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 The endpoint of vigilantism and collapse is more economic opacity. Not less. My personal view is companies with more than any of 1,000 employees, $10mm revenue or a $100mm valuation should have to file a simple annual disclosu…

Those are single-member LLC revenue numbers. You can get $10M in revenue just by being in a low-margin business. For industries with a 1% margin that's $100k a year in net income, i.e. wages and benefits for one person. And how are you going to calculate valuation for a closely held private company? In particular, how are you going to calculate it without making them do the thing you don't know if they're required to…

> Those are single-member LLC revenue numbers. You can get $10M in revenue just by being in a low-margin business. For industries with a 1% margin that's $100k a year in net income, i.e. wages and benefits for one person.

I'm not sure I understand your argument? Wages come out of revenue not income? So the $100k would go to the owners, but as captical gains not wages.

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