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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

#351

Post by stevenjgarner »

It is important to understand that Dollar General and Family Dollar serve thousands of flyover communities where there are no Walmart stores or other viable market access. Dollar General has stated that it can generate profits in communities with fewer than 1,000 homes. Walmart generally requires a much larger population base for its stores.

Dollar General is the largest retailer in the US by number of locations, with over 20,000 stores across 48 states. Family Dollar operates over 8,200 stores. Walmart's U.S. store count is significantly smaller (around 4,700 U.S. Walmart stores and 600 Sam's Clubs as of 2024).

Dollar stores are frequently found at the heart of "food deserts," which are often rural communities located more than 10 miles from a grocery store selling fresh produce—a gap often created when a community is too small to maintain a supermarket or attract a retailer like Walmart.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#352

Post by CPLX »

gruez wrote: post #244
CPLX wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 comp…

>Private equity firms have much more devious ways of looting the companies, like management fees, acquiring other portfolio companies, and various other tricks. "looting the companies" is non-nonsensical when they also own it. It's like saying a scrap yard is "looting" the cars it bought by taking out the valuable parts to resell or whatever. The rest of the stuff might make sense in the context of the LPs getting sc…

What you’re saying just isn’t true.

Looting the companies is accomplished by stacking up debt and then giving themselves the money. Occasionally there are a few variations like looting a pension fund or taking a high quality product and making it horrible and selling that until people notice.

It’s literally their business model, it’s happened thousands of times and is a very clear fixture of the modern American business climate.

If you don’t know this it’s because you aren’t looking or it’s in your interest to say you don’t know this.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#353

Post by JumpCrisscross »

BrenBarn wrote: post #295

> But North Carolina law caps penalties at $5,000 per inspection, offering retailers little incentive to fix the problem This is a huge problem with all manner of laws in the US. We are not willing to insist that fees be limited only by their ability to prevent the prohibited behavior. Fines should continually escalate, if necessary until the offender is bankrupted, at which point their assets are taken. If Dollar Tr…

It looks like North Carolina’s previous Weights & Measures law was entirely criminal. So in 1991 they added civil powers, but curtailed the fines.

The solution here appears to be less in raising the civil fine and more in criminally investigating, to start with, the store manager [1].

[1] https://www.ncleg.gov/enactedlegislation/statutes/html/bycha... § 81A-30.1

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#354

Post by itchingsphynx »

Full_Clark wrote: post #267
itchingsphynx wrote: post #227

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 ext…

Requirements about surcharge notifications and displaying all-up prices are nice, but the gap here will still be about enforcement and not regulation. The core problem for dollar-store shoppers in the US is about getting the retailers to honor the sticker price, not whether the sticker price shows all state and local taxes. Is the Australian shopper protected simply by a stronger culture of adherence amongst retailer…

Yes, probably difficult to compare regulation and inspection.

As for enforcement, ACCC recently took Microsoft to Federal Court for hiding Copilot pricing shenanigans, as discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45721682

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#355

Post by ant6n »

teeray wrote: post #290
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.

Corporate fines should all be percentages of profits.

Or revenue?

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#356

Post by edoceo »

gruez wrote: post #199
venturecruelty wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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…

PE does this wealth extraction trick which breeds the ill-will.

Eg: purchase a few mom&pop veterinarian business in some area. Squeeze the service rates, trim hours, reduce staff, add some debt. The PE investor gets cash out - the business is destroyed and the community loses a (critical? valuable?) service.

It's a common pattern. But not all PE is like this. Like "not all men" and "not all guns" - but enough that the pattern is easily associated - and disliked by many w/o the power to keep them out.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#357

Post by koolba »

ant6n wrote: post #355
teeray wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate fines should all be percentages of profits.

Or revenue?

If movie contracts are any lesson, you always want to be on the gross. Too many ways to game the system otherwise.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#358

Post by Paradigm2020 »

terminalshort wrote: post #84
gessha wrote: post #55

Earlier 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?

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.

In Australian supermarkets when the price of the item is wrong you get the item for free. (At least it was like that in 2011). Cashiers would run into the store to go fix the price tag.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#359

Post by josh_p »

When I worked grocery retail when I was a teen 20ish years ago, any time a customer disputed the price of something during checkout, we’d have someone check the shelf and find the display tag. If the price was lower as the customer suggested, we’d always give them the item at the price listed on the display tag. An employee usually just missed that tag during price change day.

It’s so foreign to me that any retail place would defer to “the computer” if display price and database price were out of sync.

Even young-me understood the idea of “oh yeah, our bad, have it at the lower price” and the potential for legal action if we did otherwise.

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