alt Hacker News> 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 behavior of Dollar General and Family Dollar.
Left unsaid is that both Dollar General and Family Dollar would become unprofitable if they stop tricking customers. (Both companies typically earn only 3-4% on sales.)
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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 still more stupid than it is malicious.)
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Dollar General got into the thick of it with the Ohio Attorney General a couple of years ago[1] over this issue: The prices on the shelf didn't always match the prices at the register. Stores were closed[2] while they updated their price tags to match reality.
And as part of the settlement with the Ohio AG: Nowadays, when I go into a Dollar General and Red Baron pizzas are on the shelf for $5 and they ring up at $7.65, they're required to honor the posted price of $5 when I bring this up to them.
(That last bit really should be enshrined in law instead of the footnotes of a legal settlement with a single entity, but alas: It just isn't that way in Ohio.)
[1]: https://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Media/Newsletters/Consum...
[2]: https://www.supermarketnews.com/foodservice-retail/ohio-ag-d...
This is very American: it's illegal, but everyone accepts both that the law will be enforced very unevenly, and that this kind of thing doesn't get solved by the regular political process. There's no political consumer complaints culture, it's seen as an individual matter.
You couldn't get away with this for as long in the UK as a retailer. Either the CMA or Trading Standards would deal with it.
It was investigated. They got fined $5k. 4 times.
Is there another law that can get them for repeat abuse.
>> Red Baron frozen pizzas, listed on the shelf at $5, rang up at $7.65.
The crazy thing is that even if it did ring up at the correct price it isn't a good deal. It's around $4.80-4.90 at Walmart and Target and others.
I am a POS system developer. Such errors can occur in the systems I develop, but they are unintentional—often caused by price data synchronization issues. I am actively working to resolve them.
If a business model only works as long as customers don't notice the real price, then the model itself is fundamentally broken
> Left unsaid is that both Dollar General and Family Dollar would become unprofitable if they stop tricking customers. (Both companies typically earn only 3-4% on sales.)
They could of course show the actual prices instead of tricking customers?
If the margins are so low nobody else will be significantly cheaper anyway.
It was investigated, the issue is that the fines are smaller than the profit. I would personally want to see things like this considered fraud and that it can result in prison sentences for executives and other people invovled in the decision making.