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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

#381

Post by cyberax »

phyzome wrote: post #315
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…

Yup. My local Star Market was pretty bad about this, so I started paying close attention to prices on the shelf and at the register. Pretty soon I was taking home free items every shopping trip. (I also reported them to Inspectional Services when aisle scanners were broken or prices were particularly egregiously missing or wrong.) Some of the cashiers had to have it explained to them with much pointing to the sign th…

> ...but in my experience, they're perfectly capable of doing the right thing

It's both true. Given that a typical store can have thousands of SKUs displayed, mistakes will _always_ happen once in a while. A forgotten price tag, an incorrect sale price, etc.

But at the same time, stores are more than capable of having a system to _fix_ these issues as soon as they are detected. It doesn't even take much, just a way for a cashier to flag an inconsistent price for someone at the back office.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#382

Post by ssl-3 »

josh_p wrote: post #359

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 pl…

Yeah, that "computer error" explanation is bullshit, probably rooted in a combination of CYA and narcissism.

When I worked in retail, we only had one database of pricing. The shelf tag and sign printers, the registers, the whatevers -- they all used that same database. If a shelf tag was printed at the same instant that an item was rung up, then they'd have had the same exact price.

There's mechanism for the prices to deviate.

(And yeah, pricing errors still happen at least because people are people. We make mistakes. We forget shit. We can even convince ourselves that we did a thing even if we didn't. We err. Even if we're absolutely honest with ourselves and others, we can run out of fucks to give. It's all part of our condition.

But of course: When a price was posted wrong then we fixed it once it was brought to our attention. The customer got the price that was posted, and the posting was changed.

For my own purposes, I had a habit of pulling the incorrect price tags and taking them with me back to the register; I'd just give them to whatever manager when they would show up with the key that was required for precise price adjustments and get back to doing whatever it is that my primary job was at the moment...which, if I were handling a register, meant something other than printing shelf tags.)

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#383

Post by pwg »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #208
antonymoose wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll bite… I live in a rural area with a Dollar General about a half mile from my neighborhood. For staples, it’s honestly fine. You want a 6 pack and some hot dog buns because you missed it in the Wal-Mart run the other day (15 miles away), it’s great! You’re not getting fleeced and if you are, the gas savings alone more than make up for it (0.65 per mile per the IRS.) For folks who depend on the local DG for, idk,…

Being in a shopping rich area, I have some luxury of choosing what I get where. DG is a good option for a small list of items, about ½% of my shopping. But it'd be awful if my best shopping option was 15mi away.

> But it'd be awful if my best shopping option was 15mi away.

In much of the rural US, 15mi away is having your good shopping close by. A lot of areas make due with their "best shopping option" being well more than 15mi away.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#384

Post by epsteingpt »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #266
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? Yes. Productivity typically goes up [1]. Its reputation for job cutting is overblown [2], as is its record on price increases [3]. And historically, it's tended to decrease concentration in the industries it operates in. (The conglomerate break-ups of the 1980s were fuelled by new entrants and carve-outs.) Instead, what I think we have…

The question anyone reading this analysis should ask is: if private equity is so benign, where do the returns come from?

The unlock, which these papers don't understand, is the extractive nature of P/E that is hidden.

A few clues: 1. A .5%-1% increase in prices is meaningful (Overall industry prices rise after buyouts, but again the price increase is on average very modest.) Retails margins routinely are measured in fractions of percentage points (bps). As an example, even if overall hospital prices stayed similar, P/E firms have been caught jacking up prices on people who need it most. Research on "Surprise Billing" in emergency rooms spiked immediately after PE firms took over staffing groups. Are you surprised?

2. Equity multiples are "effectively" a form of stealing from retail / pension plans: this is where the real 'theft' happens (if you want to call it that). If you reraterevenue from 6x (private) to 15-20x, someone is now paying 2-3x more per dollar to have that company in society. The key is the P/E OWNERS reap that value, so even if there are no job cuts, the wealth being created aggregates 'money supply' to the owners. This has downstream impacts on inflation.

3. Independent of aggregate effects - local effects are quite devastating. This is not P/E's fault, but closing down plants can kill towns for good. The question here is ownership - a family feels some tie to the community to attempt to help their friends and neighbors. P/E absolutely destroys this tie - the subtle but measurable effects compound.

Finally, even if you like P/E as a VEHICLE (which - I would argue it hasn't been a 'good' ones since like the late 90s), you can't ignore the fact that it's returns have largely been eaten by fees.

You're right to say that P/E is just playing the market. That doesn't mean that its impact on society has been good - the entire reason we're in the current political and economic situation we are today are by following the 'laws of the market' which have hollowed out the middle class and created a pretty large affordability crisis despite the world having achieved record levels of wealth.

The transfer from 'doers' to 'owners' has been a net negative for American society, and one of the primary reasons we don't 'build' things anymore - it's just not capitally "efficient"

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#385

Post by youarentrightjr »

CPLX wrote: post #347
youarentrightjr wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see these private equity takes on HN frequently and am really baffled by the ignorance. There's a very clear difference between a public and private company - the fiduciary duty to shareholders. 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…

> I see these private equity takes on HN frequently and am really baffled by the ignorance. Probably a good time to note that you’re posting this comment on a website created by a private equity firm for promotional purposes.

Zing! Gotem! Reddit moment xD

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#386

Post by youarentrightjr »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #280
youarentrightjr wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see these private equity takes on HN frequently and am really baffled by the ignorance. There's a very clear difference between a public and private company - the fiduciary duty to shareholders. 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…

> There is a legal requirement for directors of public companies to act in the financial interests of all shareholders No, there isn't. The whole point of Revlon duties is that they trigger "in certain limited circumstances indicating that the 'sale' or 'break-up' of the company is inevitable" [1]. Outside those conditions, "the singular responsibility of the board" is not "to maximize immediate stockholder value by…

Why bring up Revlon duties when as you say, their relevance is only during company acquisition or restructuring?

It's well established over hundreds of years of case law that directors of public companies have to act in good faith to benefit the company (and therefore, the shareholders).

Weird cherry pick.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#387

Post by rtp4me »

mindslight wrote: post #379
rtp4me wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The people that would have the ability to push back"... And they can. Just bring it up to the cashier or managers attention, and voila, they adjust the price. Please let me know if you have had a different experience.

There's no "just". It takes resources to be scanning your receipt for discrepancies and/or running your own tally. And there are a few examples in the article referencing stores refusing to adjust prices, or of people noticing on their receipt that they were defrauded and the store refusing to reimburse them.

Resources to read the receipt? Are you saying poor people can't do math? Honestly, how much effort does it take to look at your receipt and look for errors? If you are really on a tight budget, I guarantee you will be looking over your receipt.

I have watched countless people shop with a calculator or pen/pad to make sure they stay on budget. It is not hard.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#388

Post by DangitBobby »

phil21 wrote: post #378
DangitBobby wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dollar stores are crowding out grocery stores in areas that only have the clientele to support one grocery store. They sell only higher margin, long shelf-life shit food, whereas real grocery stores have to carry produce which cuts into margins considerably cause it goes bad. So it's easier for them to stay open. And they create food deserts there. They are a fucking scourge for small towns.

Sounds like the grocery stores were not serving their customer base well if they couldn’t compete with “overpriced” dollar stores. Carrying cost of produce does not add up. If produce is going bad at that spoilage rate the store management fucked up and didn’t order the correct amount of product for the location. You can’t wish your way into a product mix. Nothing was stopping grocery stores from identifying this nee…

Then feel free to explain the studies and articles online describing how dollar stores are fucking rural grocery stores.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#389

Post by shepherdjerred »

ssl-3 wrote: post #361
cs702 wrote: post #258

> Red Baron frozen pizzas, listed on the shelf at $5, rang up at $7.65. Bounty paper towels, shelf price $10.99, rang up at $15.50. Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, Stouffer’s frozen meatloaf, Sprite and Pepsi, ibuprofen, Klondike Minis – shoppers were overpaying for all of them. Pedigree puppy food, listed at $12.25, rang up at $14.75. Surely, now that this made the news, there will be an investigation into the fraudulent…

Some people say it's trickery, but when I apply the razor I find pricing errors more likely to be the result of stupidity than of malice. Having worked in retail myself, I understand that some days there just isn't time to get it all done. A debt of unfinished tasks can accumulate. It happens. Sometimes old prices get left up. (I think the stupidity is on the part of management more than it is the employees, but it's…

As a company seeking to maximize profit, why would you fix this problem? It seems optimal to say "it's out of our control" -- you get to overcharge customers, and you have a reasonable explanation if a lawsuit comes.

I would be curious to see how often it's the other way around, e.g. they undercharge a customer.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#390

Post by antonymoose »

autoexec wrote: post #330
antonymoose wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll bite… I live in a rural area with a Dollar General about a half mile from my neighborhood. For staples, it’s honestly fine. You want a 6 pack and some hot dog buns because you missed it in the Wal-Mart run the other day (15 miles away), it’s great! You’re not getting fleeced and if you are, the gas savings alone more than make up for it (0.65 per mile per the IRS.) For folks who depend on the local DG for, idk,…

The concept of "small convenience store near me" isn't the problem. The problem is that these stores are actively engaging in outright fraud. People who shop there are absolutely getting fleeced regardless of how much gas they burn getting to the store that's regularly ripping them off. Having a small nearby connivance store and not getting scammed is an option. If the ability to get beer and hot dogs buns without ha…

I’m telling you from living “here” - you see just as many stories of major chains getting popped as you do the ever so scapegoatable DG chain.

I have no stock in the firm, this is just lazy feel god torch wielding here.

Here’s Target getting popped all the same: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article289980944....

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