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Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

(www.theguardian.com)
510 points bookofjoe | 11 comments | 07 Dec 25 14:37 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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regera ◴[07 Dec 25 21:07 UTC] No.46185157[source]▶
Dollar stores are private equity with a checkout lane.

In 2025, Dollar Tree sold Family Dollar to a group of private-equity firms: Brigade Capital Management, Macellum Capital Management and Arkhouse Management Co.

https://corporate.dollartree.com/news-media/press-releases/d...

It’s a business model cosplaying as poverty relief while quietly siphoning money from the people least able to lose it. They already run on a thin-staff, high-volume model. That 23% increase is not a glitch. They know their customers can’t drive across town to complain. They know the regulators won’t scale fines to revenue.

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sema4hacker ◴[07 Dec 25 21:15 UTC] No.46185228[source]▶
Has private equity ever done anything good for anyone outside of the investors?
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WarOnPrivacy ◴[07 Dec 25 22:07 UTC] No.46185700[source]▶
> Has private equity ever done anything good for anyone outside of the investors?

If it's not publicly traded, it's super secure from any public accountability.

And while I'm increasingly hostile toward the shareholder model, we do get one transparency breadcrumb from this (gov managed) contrivance: The Earnings Call

Earnings Calls give us worthwhile amounts of internal information that we'd never get otherwise - info that often conflicts with public statements and reports to govs.

Like CapEx expenditures/forecast and the actual reasons that certain segments over/underperform. It's a solid way to catch corporations issuing bald-faced lies (for any press, public, gov that are paying attention).

    AT&T PR: Net Neutrality is tanking our infra investment
    ATT's EC: CapEx is high and that will continue
I'll bet 1 share that there are moves to get this admin to do away with the requirement.
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1. ineedasername ◴[08 Dec 25 03:18 UTC] No.46187914[source]▶
>I'll bet 1 share...

I won't be your counterparty on that bet, you've already won:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/09/15/trump-wants...

One of the reasons cited? All the work it takes. Which is just an insane response. If your business is so poorly run and organized that reconciling things each quarter represents a disproportionate amount of effort, something is very wrong. It means you definitely don't know what's going on, because by definition you can't know, not outside those 4 times a year. In which case there's a reasonable chance the requirement to do so is the only thing that's kept it from going off the rails.

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2. CamelCaseName ◴[08 Dec 25 14:44 UTC] No.46192777[source]▶
There's a huge difference between internal and external reporting from an effort and benefit perspective.
3. raw_anon_1111 ◴[08 Dec 25 15:09 UTC] No.46193085[source]▶
There is a huge difference between reconciling things for your own business strategy and reconciling things in accordance with federal public company reporting standards for publicly traded companies.

These standards are different than IRS reporting.

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4. randerson ◴[08 Dec 25 15:46 UTC] No.46193634[source]▶
I rarely agree with Trump, but I'm a former exec at a public company and he's not wrong. You need a horde of lawyers and accountants and investor relations and SOX compliance people and auditors etc for the earnings reports. SOX adds burdensome processes at every layer of the organization. Your CFO and CEO will be preoccupied by earnings. It's a real disincentive for a small/medium cap company to go (or stay) public. A PE firm taking a company private can get rid of all this overhead on Day 1.

Not to mention, quarterly reports incentivize a company to focus on the current quarter instead of longer-term sustainability. Reporting twice a year doesn't solve all the above problems, but it sure would reduce them a little.

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5. brookst ◴[08 Dec 25 18:07 UTC] No.46195582[source]▶
Twice a year reporting also makes it easier for insiders to cash out before bad news becomes public.
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6. brendoelfrendo ◴[08 Dec 25 18:21 UTC] No.46195745[source]▶
Worth noting, though, that the SOX "burden" came out of Enron and WorldCom. I'd be willing to debate the actual mechanics of the burden and see if streamlining the regulations for modern companies is possible, but I won't accept that the burden is unjustified.
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7. randerson ◴[08 Dec 25 21:59 UTC] No.46198226{3}[source]▶
Almost all insiders file trading plans far in advance as a defense against accusations of insider trading. Twice-a-year reporting actually makes it harder for insiders because they will have to file their trading plans further in advance. And it doesn't stop shareholders from suing insiders if they believe there was actual insider trading.
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8. randerson ◴[08 Dec 25 22:35 UTC] No.46198584{3}[source]▶
Yes, opaque accounting was a real problem. I would love to see a more streamlined, modern take on SOX. Today's SOX, in practice feels like a box-checking exercise and mandatory funneling of money to accounting firms who don't understand the intricacies of (among other things) modern software development. They forced inefficient processes on my company and weren't willing to discuss smarter solutions. No doubt there are better SOX auditors & consultants than I dealt with. But its part of the reason companies now stay private for longer and prefer secondary rounds for employee liquidity. So now retail investors miss out on the action, while accredited investors have even less transparency than a pre-SOX public company.
9. ineedasername ◴[09 Dec 25 20:50 UTC] No.46210464[source]▶
That doesn’t change anything: there isn’t anything in the reporting requirements that I can look at and say “that’s useless I wouldn’t want to know that about my business”
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10. raw_anon_1111 ◴[09 Dec 25 22:17 UTC] No.46211499{3}[source]▶
There are entire classes in graduate school (I am an MBA dropout) that specifically focus on Management Accounting used to make internal decisions that are different than the accounting that you have to do for public accounting.

I don’t care about the GAAP depreciation guidelines when I’m deciding something if my own internal metrics show that I can get twice the useful life out of equipment

11. brookst ◴[10 Dec 25 03:19 UTC] No.46213612{4}[source]▶
Wait, where in this proposal did you see a change in requirements around planned selling? My assumption, perhaps unfair, certainty supported by trends in US lawlessness, is that the whole scheme is to change reporting but not windows for planned sales.