The Federal Trade Commission and 20 states have sued Dollar General, the nation’s largest dollar store chain, for persistently overcharging customers at its more than 20,000 stores across the United States. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Nashville, cites a Guardian investigation published last December. The company has routinely charged customers at the register more than the prices displayed on shelves, price tags and advertisements. This pattern of inaccurate pricing has persisted for years and affects millions of purchases across the country.” The lawsuit says the scope of the retailer’s “pricing misconduct” is “staggering.” The FTC is the federal agency charged with protecting consumers from deceptive, unfair and anti-competitive business practices. State officials from Mississippi to Ohio, Nebraska and Utah have joined the case as plaintiffs. Dollar General rejected the allegations. “The lawsuit filed today…suggests that we have abandoned our mission and have intentionally ignored our customers’ affordability needs,” the company said in a statement. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Our goal is 100% accuracy between shelf and register prices at each store.” That item “was the subject of significant internal deliberations and discussions” within the company, according to the lawsuit. The agency noted in the lawsuit that Dollar General has policies in place that are supposed to align register prices with shelf prices. For example, it directs employees to remove and replace outdated labels on certain days of the week. Workers told The Guardian that, due to staffing shortages, they often are too busy to change those labels. “Dollar General’s written policies for updating prices accomplish little in practice,” the lawsuit said, because they “fail to track whether printed labels are actually attached to shelves.” The lawsuit says, resulted in overcharges on multiple products. At a Dollar General in Cleveland, 8 of 58 items purchased were more expensive than the prices listed on the product label or on the shelf — an overcharge rate of nearly 14%. Dollar General said it first learned of the FTC investigation in February, when it received a civil investigation demand from the agency. producing more than 200,000 documents and more than 350 gigabytes of data and making several company representatives available to provide sworn testimony on relatively short notice.” lawsuit. Dollar General said it will “vigorously defend this litigation.” The company said that, in the retail market, “occasional pricing discrepancies may occur. When that happens, our store teams are educated, trained and expected to do things right for the customer. In recent years, we have improved our pricing accuracy processes and remain committed to continuous improvement.” settlement to resolve allegations that it had repeatedly overcharged customers across the state.
