Comment by miki123211
1 day ago
IANAL and this depends on the jurisdiction, but in many places, the penalties for shenanigans like these are far steeper than for outright theft, as it's considered to be financial fraud.
1 day ago
IANAL and this depends on the jurisdiction, but in many places, the penalties for shenanigans like these are far steeper than for outright theft, as it's considered to be financial fraud.
Some retail chains, of which Dollar General is the poster child, have one price displayed on the shelf and a different, much higher price at the checkout register.
Links:
> Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has filed suit against Dollar General, claiming deceptive and unfair pricing at its more than 600 retail stores throughout the state. The lawsuit alleges that Dollar General violated Missouri’s consumer protection laws by advertising one price at the shelf and charging a higher price at the register upon checkout.
> The joint investigation revealed that “92 of the 147 locations where investigations were conducted failed inspection. Price discrepancies ranged up to as much as $6.50 per item, with an average overcharge of $2.71 for the over 5,000 items price-checked by investigators.”
https://progressivegrocer.com/dollar-general-accused-decepti...
> All told, 69 of the 300 items came up higher at the register: a 23% error rate that exceeded the state’s limit by more than tenfold. Some of the price tags were months out of date.
> The January 2023 inspection produced the store’s fourth consecutive failure, and Coffield’s agency, the state department of agriculture & consumer services, had fined Family Dollar after two previous visits. But North Carolina law caps penalties at $5,000 per inspection, offering retailers little incentive to fix the problem. “Sometimes it is cheaper to pay the fines,” said Chad Parker, who runs the agency’s weights-and-measures program.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/03/customers-pa...
In Norway, if you notice that the price at checkout is higher than what it said on the shelf, you can in most cases demand to pay the shelf price and the store has to honour it unless it is an obvious error such as some expensive electronics being tagged as costing an impossibly low amount.
It goes without saying however, that the customer himself is of course not allowed to alter the price on the shelf (like the Flipper Zero program in the featured link facilitates) and then pay the altered amount :P
>> [...] the state department of agriculture & consumer services, had fined Family Dollar after two previous visits. But North Carolina law caps penalties at $5,000 per inspection, offering retailers little incentive [...]
So - if the state didn't have any blabbermouths on staff, and spent some time training, how many "inspections" could they speedrun in an hour?
It sucks that we have to do extra labor and expose ourselves to this kind of legal risk all because a grocery store doesn't want to staff workers. It's not even like they pass these savings onto us...
That's true, grocery stores made record profits during covid.
I've sometimes toyed with the idea of an "open sourced" grocery store that's extremely transparent about every detail. Think electronic price tags that give you a complete breakdown of the cost of an item, cost of labor, cost to account for "loss", over/under-supply, etc.
I feel like there's a niche out there for hyperinformed consumers
That's basically Costco, the price they pay is what you pay, the system paired down to bare necessities, and it is incredibly popular.
6 replies →
That's pretty much what a food co-op is supposed to be.
1 reply →
I think with this openness the problem is there’s so many fluctuations and estimates that average consumer would think you’re being dishonest even if you weren’t. They’d see that you acquired an item for $20 and could never quite understand why they have to pay you $50. They’d see the plethora of line item costs as nickel and diming even if many are absolute hard costs. They’d see the estimated numbers as inflated.
There are coop grocery stores where members get to see the financials at a high level and make price changes that make the market sustainable. This is usually some form of shared ownership but I think this is a better way to achieve similar goals.
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I have always liked the idea of a company that sits between me and all the other services I engage. Like I am a client of ZipZorp and they negotiate on my behalf rentals, travel, providers, utilities et al. ZipZorp provides value to me by using their size to negotiate better rates, conditions, offer legal protection and as you put it remain hyperinformed in a way that I cannot. I would pay for a service like that.