Honest Mistakes or Intentional Overpricing

We’ve all experienced it at some point. You take an item to the cash register and it rings up at the wrong price. If it’s an insignificant amount maybe you ignore it. Others may pinch every penny. Utah is paying attention.

Apparently, both Dollar General and Family Dollar have been caught posting one price on the shelf while ringing up a higher price at the register. Are they honest mistakes… or fraud? Computer prices are usually set by headquarters. It’s pretty much instantaneous. Shelf prices are different. It takes time to correct them and many places are short on help.

An investigation found that Dollar General stores failed more than 4,300 government price-accuracy inspections in 23 states between 2022 and 2025. The smaller Family Dollar chain failed more than 2,100 price-accuracy inspections in 20 states during the same period. That’s terrible… or is it?

The article didn’t mention how a violation was defined. If headquarters sets a price and 100 of its stores fail to correct the shelf price, is that 100 violations… or just one. Remember, we’re dealing with instantaneous computer pricing vs. physical pricing which is time consuming.

One big offender, a Family Dollar store in Provo, Utah, failed 28 pricing inspections in the four-year span. That doesn’t sound so bad. That’s only seven per year. If it’s only on seven items, that certainly sounds like honest mistakes. However, during one visit, an inspector discovered overcharges for 48% of the items she tested. That certainly sounds like intentional fraud, or at best, a highly mismanaged outlet. But not so fast. It’s entirely possible that the inspection focused only on items for which complaints were already filed. The article again fails to clarify.

After the Guardian published its article, legislators contacted the Utah Department of Agriculture to ask if there was some way to prevent these repeated overcharges, said Miland Kofford, who heads the agency’s weights-and-measures program.

Kofford had an idea for how to pressure retailers into compliance. Double the penalty from $5,000 maximum to $10,000 maximum. So Utah did. Apparently, a five-figure number gets attention from corporate far more than a four-figure number. Call it a “pain point”. Every company has a petty cash allotment. The bigger the company, the bigger the figure. Anything under that is considered petty and not worth attention.

Honest mistakes are acceptable if the store admits so and then fixes it in a timely manner. However, imposed penalties for intentional overpricing, or honest mistakes due to poor management, don’t help consumers, either. They’re yet another expense which corporate needs to account for. At discount stores, profits margins already start out slim. Multiple penalties will eventually mean higher prices, and perhaps lost customers – something no company wants.

As a former business owner, the psychology is this. Since customers seldom point out paying less than listed cost, corporate needs to fend for themselves to maintain profits. On the other hand, customers will “do your job for you” by pointing out any overpricing, which can then be corrected. Added emphasis on the former is simple business logic.

Source used: The Guardian