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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

#411

Post by protocolture »

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…

Regulators take tip offs and if one gets through, the enforcement action is usually pretty fast and strong.

They also like doing this. The ACCC makes a huge deal out of parading their latest conquest in the media.

Has its faults, the ACCCs dealings with telcos are especially terrible.

I still have friends at an Applecare provider based in oz, and they had a big one where as a settlement with the ACCC over trying to have it both ways with consumer law, they agreed to provide repairs or replacements for like a decade of wrongfully denied hardware issues. Hushed it right up. It was in lieu of a public apology from memory. But my friends spent weeks calling back old customers, chasing new contact details etc, to try and get them all free replacements.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#412

Post by phil21 »

Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #299
pclmulqdq wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody in this comment chain was saying it was good for the customers. The GP was saying that they clear out room for new businesses, and if brick-and-mortar-fabric-superstore were still a viable model someone would be doing it.

I am looking for fabric right now and am terribly frustrated not to have anywhere but limited quilting shops available. Online is not an answer, because you can't handle the fabric for weight, exact color, and stretchiness. JoAnn drove all the medium-sized fabric stores out and left us with nothing.

The lack of customer density over time drove out all the fabric stores - medium sized or not.

At-home sewing has been declining since I've been alive, and it was just barely hanging on when I was a kid. The demographics simply cannot support these stores in most locations outside of hyper-dense cities.

Not to mention the folks who shop for fabric tend to be some of the most cost-conscious consumers around. They are more or less the prototype of a customer who will go to a B&M store and then price match on-line,.

I'm honestly surprised even Jo-anne survived as long as it did.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#413

Post by [deleted] »

jefftk wrote: post #376
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.

3. Point at the sign, which is posted at every register, and ask for your discount. If they say no you ask for the manager. I've done this several times, and never had an issue (but sometimes it takes a little while).

[deleted]

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#414

Post by qeternity »

DangitBobby wrote: post #388
phil21 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How about you cite something.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#415

Post by websiteapi »

in 2025 I'm surprised you can't just scan everything on your phone yourself and get the up-to-date price. are there laws stating things must be a posted price? seems easier for everyone to have something you can scan that show you the latest price, or auto updating tags.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#416

Post by phil21 »

whynotmaybe wrote: post #134
lotsofpulp wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They already run on a thin-staff, high-volume model. Like every other retail business not targeting the top 5%. And Dollar Tree and Dollar General are both publicly listed companies, not private equity. Dollar Tree sold Family Dollar for $1B 10 years after buying it for $8.5B, a pretty big loss. Dollar Tree’s market cap is $25B, so a pretty negligible part of the national dollar store business is “private equity”.

Costco

Costco purposefully targets the upper middle class to nearly the point of exclusion of everyone else. By charging membership fees, product selection, and the bulk pricing.

They could care less about the bottom 50% of the market.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#417

Post by morkalork »

pixl97 wrote: post #325
netsharc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, with eInk prices, how do customers prove "Wait, the price on the shelf was different!", the store can just change the price as they go to double-check. As a customer you can take a picture of the price, but then it'll be an argument of "This picture is old/doctored/AI". Of course the chances of this sort of scam happening are probably not that high, but hey, considering the country is rotting more and more, from…

Snap a pic I guess, there are many ways to game this either way, but if people start catching stores do this then it could lead to issues for the store.

Could it? A gas station doesn't get in trouble if I show up with a photo of yesterday's posted price

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#418

Post by [deleted] »

delfinom wrote: post #375
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because a PE fund is at most a seven year timeline Berkshire Hathaway is a PE fund with permanent capital. Broadly speaking, making generalisatios about PE is almost impossible because it's an asset class which is, essentially, all non-public business. Instead, it's more useful to think about which element private equity touches you're specifically complaining about: capitalism in general, financial transparency, l…

The problem with PE is only the hyper aggressive and generally terrible ones make the news. The quiet ones that simply run business well, don't make the news. There are PE firms that specialize in rescuing distressed companies with potential and turning them around. In many cases not firing anyone and holding onto the form they acquired for a long time.

[deleted]

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#419

Post by JumpCrisscross »

delfinom wrote: post #375
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because a PE fund is at most a seven year timeline Berkshire Hathaway is a PE fund with permanent capital. Broadly speaking, making generalisatios about PE is almost impossible because it's an asset class which is, essentially, all non-public business. Instead, it's more useful to think about which element private equity touches you're specifically complaining about: capitalism in general, financial transparency, l…

The problem with PE is only the hyper aggressive and generally terrible ones make the news. The quiet ones that simply run business well, don't make the news. There are PE firms that specialize in rescuing distressed companies with potential and turning them around. In many cases not firing anyone and holding onto the form they acquired for a long time.

> quiet ones that simply run business well, don't make the news

And don’t call themselves PE. They’re a diversified family business. Or a VC fund. Or whatever the fuck the Ellison’s are doing to Paramount.

Re: Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

#420

Post by jhawk28 »

They are attributing malice/greed to what is more likely just incompetence compounded by inflation. The employees most likely haven't updated the pricing on the shelves. If you have ever been in a DG or DT, you can see that the inventory is generally a mess and just put everywhere. There is one or two people up at the front. They don't have as many people stocking shelves as a grocery store to keep the inventory in order.
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