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Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

(www.theguardian.com)
510 points bookofjoe | 1 comments | 07 Dec 25 14:37 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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jmspring ◴[07 Dec 25 21:32 UTC] No.46185369[source]▶
The sad thing is, people in rural areas that depend on places like Dollar General, and are getting fleeced blame everyone but republicans and they are usually in red areas
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antonymoose ◴[07 Dec 25 21:59 UTC] No.46185612[source]▶
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, clothes and household goods it might be much worse, I don’t shop for those there ever, but on staples it’ll do, especially given the density of stores compared to major chains.

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autoexec ◴[08 Dec 25 00:22 UTC] No.46186894[source]▶
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 having to drive to a larger more distant store is really worth the higher prices customers are getting fraudulently charged at the register, then these stores can just stop lying to customers and post the accurate prices.

If the laws were meaningfully enforced this is exactly what would happen. These stores would either comply with the law and stop committing fraud or they would be shut down, their CEOs would be sent to prison, and competitors willing to follow the law would step in to fill the need the market has for a small shop that sells beer and buns to rake in that profit for themselves.

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antonymoose ◴[08 Dec 25 01:29 UTC] No.46187299{3}[source]▶
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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1. autoexec ◴[08 Dec 25 05:35 UTC] No.46188755{4}[source]▶
Your article lists a few instances of target in an area failing at rates like 9% or 2.67%. The Guardian article shows dollar stores all over the place caught thousands of times and getting error rates like 76% 68% and 58%. One dollar store in Utah was caught cheating their customers in 28 inspections in a row! Maybe the News & Observer could have dug deeper into the Targets in your area and found violations of a similar scale, but they didn't, so from the information we have these are extremely different circumstances.

If Target (or whatever the hell a Sheetz is) were ripping off their customers to the same extent that these dollar stores have been doing it then they should also face meaningful consequences for that.