investigation<\/a>, which found that Dollar General stores failed more than 4,300 government price-accuracy inspections in 23 states over a three-year period. That article \u201cwas the subject of significant internal deliberation and discussions\u201d within the company, the lawsuit said.<\/p>\nThe 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 For example, it directs employees to remove and replace outdated labels on certain days of the week.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, because of understaffing, they are often too busy to change those labels.<\/p>\n
\u201cDollar General\u2019s on-paper policies to update pricing achieve little in practice,\u201d the lawsuit said, because \u201cthey do not track whether the printed labels are actually affixed to shelves.\u201d<\/p>\n
The FTC cited a Guardian interview with a former lead sales associate in Louisiana who said: \u201cI threw away tags sometimes, to keep me or a co-worker out of trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit indicates that FTC investigators made undercover purchases at Dollar General stores in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Maryland over a two and half month span. The first of these secret shopper tests took place this January, six weeks after the Guardian\u2019s investigation focused wide attention on the discount chain\u2019s pricing practices.<\/p>\n
Every single undercover visit, the suit says, turned up overcharges on multiple products. At a Dollar General in Cleveland, 8 of 58 items purchased rang up more costly than the prices listed on the product label or shelf \u2013 an overcharge rate of nearly 14%.<\/p>\n
Dollar General said it first learned of the FTC\u2019s investigation in February when it received a civil investigative demand from the agency. The company said that the investigation appeared to have \u201can unusually accelerated timeline\u201d but that it \u201cengaged cooperatively with the commission, producing more than 200,000 documents and over 350 gigabytes of data and making several company representatives available to provide sworn testimony on relatively short notice\u201d.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s statement said it pushed back against the calculations behind the FTC\u2019s demand for financial compensation for consumers, but that it was surprised when the agency did not respond to its counteroffer and instead filed suit.<\/p>\n
Dollar General said it \u201cwill defend this litigation vigorously\u201d.<\/p>\n
The company said that, in the retail marketplace, \u201coccasional price discrepancies can occur. When that happens, our store teams are instructed, empowered and expected to make things right for the customer. In recent years, we have enhanced our price-accuracy processes and remain committed to continuous improvement.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a separate case, the New York attorney general, Letitia James, announced<\/a> earlier this month that Dollar General had agreed to a $1.875m deal to settle allegations that it had repeatedly overcharged customers across the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Federal Trade Commission and 20 states have sued Dollar General, the nation\u2019s largest dollar-store chain, for persistently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":896129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-896128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=896128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/896129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}