In other words, regulatory capture at its finest, over the backs of the poorest in the country.
To attain change, enough people have to:
1. Correctly identify the source of their misery, because it ain't [insert scapegoats].
2. Find others who agree with them.
3. Make a plan for effective countering of 1.
4. Use intestinal fortitude and endure temporary setbacks to achieve 3. to overcome 1.
5. Prevent 1. from ever happening again structurally, culturally, and through vigilant participation.
The 0th problem is the political operating system is captured by criminals and power has centralized grotesquely in ways that defeat the fundamental function of separation of powers. All elected officials corrupted by lobbyist bribes need to face accountability and have a code of ethics and integrity, because continuing down this path is the road to ruin.
So, have every agent in the state inspect them. Fine 5k. Immediately inspect again, different goods. Fine another 5k. Keep doing it opening hours.
Treat them like an inspection money piñata until they fix their ways. State gets a big pile of money to do better, and massive fines at 5k a pop for a few weeks punish the company and their bottom line.
So intent matters. What would decide an individual case is not the exact characterisation of the laws on the books, but how sympathetic a regulator or a judge is to the supermarket's claim that these things just happen sometimes.
Are there any common-law jurisdictions in the world where having products on sale in a supermarket is not generally considered invitation to treat but as an offer to sell?
One reason it works this way is that treating displayed items as an offer to sell would leave it unclear to whom the offer to sell would be made. Clearly each item on display can only be sold to one of the many shoppers who sees it, so they can't all be offered the sale. There are several other reasons too, like different customers being offered different terms of sale based on loyalty program membership, promotions, student or senior discounts, etc.
Here is the Wikipedia summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitation_to_treat
As the article says, the term in various US jurisdictions may be slightly different, like invitation to bargain, but the basic concept is the same. (I'm ignoring Louisiana entirely, which has a completely different legal tradition not derived from English common law.)
Could an inspector manage two per day? If you figure the full cost of each inspector is $150,000/year but dedicated ones could do 8 inspections at $5k each per week, there's well over $1 million/year per inspector (assuming not all inspections would be the full fine, there's travel costs per inspector, inspectors would have to spend some office/court time, etc. that would bring it down from the potential maximum of ~$1,800,000 each factoring in vacation and holidays).
Even Republicans could get behind it! "We're reducing the direct budget of the department, but authorizing it to hire additional inspectors in order to bring in additional revenue that can be utilized to bring the budget to or above its current levels." It's a cost reduction measure!
A long time ago I used to help manage a couple retail stores. A $5k random expense would have put that location into the red for the month. Perhaps not the volume of a dollar store chain, but certainly not small either.
I have a feeling that if the $5k fines were basically guaranteed to happen with some regularity you’d see this cleaned up pretty quickly with local management replaced ASAP if not.
Enforcement doesn’t have to be over the top abusive with the goal to put a location out of business overnight. Especially in already underserved communities. Like everything to do with humans there simply needs to be consistent, reliable, and timely consequences to form a reliable and immediate feedback loop for behavior.
If a store makes it an actual policy to eat these fines then the fine amount needs adjusting. From everything in this article though the problem is simply it’s worth the gamble they don’t happen at all.
No, in this case the shop is legitimately offering an item for sale, and then forgetting to change the price they are offering it at. It's quite disingenuous for a shop to put up signs, and then act like those numbers aren't legally binding, while the real prices are hidden away in a database somewhere. If they want to have their database be the authoritative copy pricing information, then they can just not put up price signs to begin with.
This one really does vary by jurisdiction, but no, grocery stores generally must display prices by law.
If the price on the shelf were an offer to sell, then you would be contractually obliged to buy everything you picked up. The offer comes instead from when you pass it to the cashier, which is why I'm saying for the third time on this thread, if you don't like that price walk out and leave the goods at the checkout...see if they find it more fun to put all your goods back, or put the correct prices on the shelf! If a group of people did this at every till the store would be effectively closed.
These provision are called "qui tam" from "qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hac parte sequitur", or “who sues in this matter both for the king and for himself.”
I think they suit well with the US's history of bounty hunting, much like class action suits.
Such places are likely to have more proactive regulations against price discrepancies well, rather than common law "freedom".
Still I can imagine a few ways for a store to post prices without being in the territory of forming binding offers - keep stock only accessible to employees, post obnoxious signs everywhere stating that the prices are for informational purposes and that no offer is implied, require membership for entry with appropriate terms, etc.
Or rather than continuing to run the complexity treadmill trying to escape regulation, stores can just accept that they're bound by laws that were settled quite some time ago, and that their business includes making offers to sell items.
Because the current country's idea of fines against egregious business practices mainly amounts to a 5% fine of the profit they defrauded those against.
It turns a punatative action into a "cost of doing business". Look at right now with Dollar General - 25% of their goods are priced higher at register, defrauding people. And what can be done? Leave. Because many states are completely ineffectual in strongly attacking this.
And although North Carolina caps inspection fines to $5k, how many times were they even inspected? And were any fines even submitted?
My guess is no.