alt Hacker NewsIANAL 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.
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dfxm12 • today at 12:24 PM
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...
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 Some of the price tags were months out of date.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...