12 ms·

> Red Baron frozen pizzas, listed on the shelf at $5, rang up at $7.65. Bounty paper towels, shelf price $10.99, rang up at $15.50. This very rarely happens in

by jefftk 10mo ago

> Red Baron frozen pizzas, listed on the shelf at $5, rang up at $7.65. Bounty paper towels, shelf price $10.99, rang up at $15.50. This very rarely happens in MA, because when it does the store has to give you the item for $10 off, including if that makes it free. And they have to post a sign at the register explaining the law, which means when you're invoking it all you need to do is point at the sign. https://www.mass.gov/info-details/consumer-pricing-accuracy-information https://www.mass.gov/info-details/consumer-pricing-accuracy-...

underlipton 10mo ago
It's different in different states. In Maryland, once a complaint is filed with the relevant authority, the store has a certain number of days to correct pricing. Most retailers will give you the misprice if it's clearly their fault in not changing the tags, as a matter of policy. The confusion around this law is quite frustrating, though. Quite a few customers think they're entitled to not just prices on tags that haven't been updated, but prices for what are clearly entirely different products.
- hedora 10mo ago
  Is it a certain number of days to fix all the mispriced items? If not, there’s an obvious loophole here. Misprice intentionally, then stop purchasing the item from your distributor if you get called on it, rotating in some similar thing. Later, bring it back with a different sku, or mispriced at some other level. This would work well for dollar stores, which are optimized to spread in / sustain food/retail deserts. The store is often literally the only option in town. The wouldn’t even need to sell excess warehouse inventory at the advertised price, since they could just shift supply to another state (or county/store, depending on how poorly the law is worded).
  - underlipton 10mo ago
    This seems to be the handbook for price complaint inspections following a complaint to the relevant authority (in this case, the Maryland Office of the Attorney General). https://mda.maryland.gov/Documents/HANDBOOK%20130%20Examination%20Procedure%20for%20Price%20Verification.pdf https://mda.maryland.gov/Documents/HANDBOOK%20130%20Examinat... Practically-speaking, stores have at least as long as it takes for an inspector to come out to the physical location. So, yes, it's a bit of a loophole, but I imagine that if you're mispricing as a matter of course and getting hit with complaints and constant inspections, you're probably going to eventually get fined (unless you're paying off inspectors). Store operations are usually designed to catch mistakes, as half the job is making sure items are stocked and labeled correctly. (I think most stores would prefer to transition to essentially local warehouses that delivered to customers from online orders, so that they wouldn't have to deal with any of this, but then they'd lose out on impulse purchases.)
coin 10mo ago
Michigan in the 90s had a similar rule. Customer gets 10x the overcharge (up to $5 max). I can guarantee you they fixed the price immediately. Where I live there’s no such rule I can tell you no one is correcting the price when I point out that I got overcharged (they usually shrug with “it does that sometimes”).
- jimmydddd 10mo ago
  "It does that sometimes." I guess for some reason the minimum wage cashier was not fully invested in maximizing the customer experience.
  - Buttons840 10mo ago
    Somehow the entity exploiting both parties of the exchange is not actually present or accountable for anything that happens in the exchange.
  - Rechtsstaat 10mo ago
    See: 'accountability sinks'[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41891694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41891694]
technothrasher 10mo ago
Note that this law is only for certain products. We would have people at the liquor store I used to own point out mislabeling occasionally and claim we owed them the $10 difference from this law. While we tried to work with customers when we made a pricing error, not only does the accuracy law not apply to alcoholic beverages, but it would often be illegal for us to offer the customer the mistaken price. Alcohol retailers in MA are not legally allowed to sell their products for less than they purchased them.
- Cyclone_ 10mo ago
  That's probably aimed at reducing consumption.
  - hunter2_ 10mo ago
    I assume eliminating the "loss leader" concept is the main effect, since shops shouldn't otherwise price things as losses regardless? In which case it seems like it's meant to maintain some friction / overhead for people wanting to visit the stores, possibly reducing consumption at least for the price-sensitive.
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 10mo ago
      In Texas the law exists as well, phrased as cannot offer price below wholesale price for alcohol which in effect bans “bottomless/all you can drink” deals as well. It is indeed designed as a way to discourage consumption
    - thefringthing 10mo ago
      Selling at a loss can also be a monopolistic practice: a firm with enough capital can sell at a loss to capture the market, and then buy out their now-flailing competition.
  - gwbas1c 10mo ago
    There's a lot of old laws that special case alcohol in the US; mostly artifacts of prohibition and temperance movements.
burkaman 10mo ago
Is this a recent law? I lived most of my life in MA and I've never heard of this, and never noticed one of those signs.
zahlman 10mo ago
... American "dollar stores" have items in the first place at $10+? I thought it was already amusing when Dollarama reached the $5 CAD threshold.
- sgerenser 10mo ago
  Family Dollar and Dollar General (the subjects of this piece) are not traditional “dollar stores” (and haven’t been in a long time) despite having Dollar in the name. They’re just discount stores, like a smaller Wal-Mart. Dollar Tree, on the other hand, had long been a traditional dollar store where most items are priced at a dollar. However after pandemic-induced inflation they have mostly changed to a $1.25-$1.50 price point and now have a number of items marked above that as well.
  - MangoToupe 10mo ago
    Even referring to them as discount stores is disingenuous as the items are mostly more expensive per unit, per weight, than at competitors.
b3lvedere 10mo ago
Once i had a very amusing discusson with a store that sold laptops. I wanted to purchase a laptop at the advertised price. The sales person told me i was in luck, because all their laptops came preinstalled with Microsoft Office for a little extra money. I told him politely i did not want to buy Microsoft Office, even for such little extra money. I just wanted the laptop. Semi-flabbergasted he told me this was not possible, because all the laptops had Office pre-installed. I told him i did not care and wanted to buy the laptop for the adverstised price. After 15 minutes of discussion, some manager came frustrated what the problem was. I pointed to the price tag and told him i wanted to buy the laptop for that price exactly and if that was possible. It was, but it would require uninstalling Office, which took them another 15 minutes. So i waited for another 15 minutes so they could remove Office. Back at home i powered on the laptop, popped in a usb disk and removed every partition that its harddisk ever had and started a nice fresh install without any bloatware.
- cbdevidal 10mo ago
  The irony is even though Dollar Tree prices are honest because they all are the same $1.25 (excluding the new “More Choices” $3-5 items) they’re still ripping you off. I always shop on a per-unit basis e.g. dollars per pound or cents per ounce, since that’s how I actually eat food. I need a certain amount of calories and a certain quantity of food to survive, and the less I pay per unit, the lower overall cost. On a per-unit basis, DT is almost always the most expensive store around, because quantities are so small! There are of course exceptions; I can recall not long ago for example buying a pound of Himalayan sea salt for a dollar. That was a solid deal, and I haven’t seen it since. But generally speaking, if you want to save money, don’t go to Dollar Tree.
  - jtbayly 10mo ago
    Unless you are buying cards. Maybe candy, too? I’d be curious about that.
  - schnable 10mo ago
    That's not really a rip off, it caters to people who can't afford to buy in larger quantities.
mvc 10mo ago
How long has this been the law? I lived in Boston for a while and don't remember this.
- jefftk 10mo ago
  I remember it from at least 2014, and wrote about it in 2019: https://www.jefftk.com/p/ma-price-accuracy-law https://www.jefftk.com/p/ma-price-accuracy-law
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
tadzikpk 10mo ago
I live in MA and wish that this were true, but do you have data / evidence to support that it rarely happens? Also, I don't know if you have tried to get your $10, but it's not like the sign is always obvious and every time I've tried, it's not like the cashier says "oops" and gives you the thing for free - they call a manager, the manager argues with you, other customers complain about the checkout delay you've created... there's social pressure there so I can understand why customers would not do this even when they can.
- stronglikedan 10mo ago
  > other customers complain about the checkout delay you've created Other customers are complaining about the checkout delay the store created, so I'm not worried about what they think.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- micromacrofoot 10mo ago
  If this happens you can file a consumer complaint with the attorney general's office... https://www.mass.gov/how-to/file-a-consumer-complaint https://www.mass.gov/how-to/file-a-consumer-complaint They do follow up with serial offenders.
- jefftk 10mo ago
  I've done this many times, and it usually takes about 5min (which sounds short, but isn't really that short). There is social pressure, but it's even stronger on the store than it is on you as a customer.
knowitnone3 10mo ago
so if I find one that is has the wrong price and get $10 off, I could potentially "buy" all of them for free?
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
fy20 10mo ago
Right, as a UK tabloid I'm surprised they didn't mention that the UK has similar laws. If you are overcharged you can ask for a refund, and the store has to honour it: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/somethings-gone-wrong-with-a-purchase/if-something-is-advertised-at-the-wrong-price/ https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/somethings-gone-w... In the 00s I worked for a supermarket that would always honour the price on the label if you pointed out an error (we'd then remove the label with the error). We had teams that would regularly check all the labels to make sure they are not out of date. Nowadays many stores where I live now use e-paper displays that update automatically.

by jefftk 10mo ago

underlipton 10mo ago

It's different in different states. In Maryland, once a complaint is filed with the relevant authority, the store has a certain number of days to correct pricing. Most retailers will give you the misprice if it's clearly their fault in not changing the tags, as a matter of policy. The confusion around this law is quite frustrating, though. Quite a few customers think they're entitled to not just prices on tags that haven't been updated, but prices for what are clearly entirely different products.

hedora 10mo ago
Is it a certain number of days to fix all the mispriced items? If not, there’s an obvious loophole here. Misprice intentionally, then stop purchasing the item from your distributor if you get called on it, rotating in some similar thing. Later, bring it back with a different sku, or mispriced at some other level. This would work well for dollar stores, which are optimized to spread in / sustain food/retail deserts. The store is often literally the only option in town. The wouldn’t even need to sell excess warehouse inventory at the advertised price, since they could just shift supply to another state (or county/store, depending on how poorly the law is worded).
- underlipton 10mo ago
  This seems to be the handbook for price complaint inspections following a complaint to the relevant authority (in this case, the Maryland Office of the Attorney General). https://mda.maryland.gov/Documents/HANDBOOK%20130%20Examination%20Procedure%20for%20Price%20Verification.pdf https://mda.maryland.gov/Documents/HANDBOOK%20130%20Examinat... Practically-speaking, stores have at least as long as it takes for an inspector to come out to the physical location. So, yes, it's a bit of a loophole, but I imagine that if you're mispricing as a matter of course and getting hit with complaints and constant inspections, you're probably going to eventually get fined (unless you're paying off inspectors). Store operations are usually designed to catch mistakes, as half the job is making sure items are stocked and labeled correctly. (I think most stores would prefer to transition to essentially local warehouses that delivered to customers from online orders, so that they wouldn't have to deal with any of this, but then they'd lose out on impulse purchases.)

coin 10mo ago

Michigan in the 90s had a similar rule. Customer gets 10x the overcharge (up to $5 max). I can guarantee you they fixed the price immediately. Where I live there’s no such rule I can tell you no one is correcting the price when I point out that I got overcharged (they usually shrug with “it does that sometimes”).

jimmydddd 10mo ago
"It does that sometimes." I guess for some reason the minimum wage cashier was not fully invested in maximizing the customer experience.
- Buttons840 10mo ago
  Somehow the entity exploiting both parties of the exchange is not actually present or accountable for anything that happens in the exchange.
- Rechtsstaat 10mo ago
  See: 'accountability sinks'[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41891694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41891694]

technothrasher 10mo ago

Note that this law is only for certain products. We would have people at the liquor store I used to own point out mislabeling occasionally and claim we owed them the $10 difference from this law. While we tried to work with customers when we made a pricing error, not only does the accuracy law not apply to alcoholic beverages, but it would often be illegal for us to offer the customer the mistaken price. Alcohol retailers in MA are not legally allowed to sell their products for less than they purchased them.

Cyclone_ 10mo ago
That's probably aimed at reducing consumption.
- hunter2_ 10mo ago
  I assume eliminating the "loss leader" concept is the main effect, since shops shouldn't otherwise price things as losses regardless? In which case it seems like it's meant to maintain some friction / overhead for people wanting to visit the stores, possibly reducing consumption at least for the price-sensitive.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 10mo ago
    In Texas the law exists as well, phrased as cannot offer price below wholesale price for alcohol which in effect bans “bottomless/all you can drink” deals as well. It is indeed designed as a way to discourage consumption
  - thefringthing 10mo ago
    Selling at a loss can also be a monopolistic practice: a firm with enough capital can sell at a loss to capture the market, and then buy out their now-flailing competition.
- gwbas1c 10mo ago
  There's a lot of old laws that special case alcohol in the US; mostly artifacts of prohibition and temperance movements.

burkaman 10mo ago

Is this a recent law? I lived most of my life in MA and I've never heard of this, and never noticed one of those signs.

zahlman 10mo ago

... American "dollar stores" have items in the first place at $10+? I thought it was already amusing when Dollarama reached the $5 CAD threshold.

sgerenser 10mo ago
Family Dollar and Dollar General (the subjects of this piece) are not traditional “dollar stores” (and haven’t been in a long time) despite having Dollar in the name. They’re just discount stores, like a smaller Wal-Mart. Dollar Tree, on the other hand, had long been a traditional dollar store where most items are priced at a dollar. However after pandemic-induced inflation they have mostly changed to a $1.25-$1.50 price point and now have a number of items marked above that as well.
- MangoToupe 10mo ago
  Even referring to them as discount stores is disingenuous as the items are mostly more expensive per unit, per weight, than at competitors.

b3lvedere 10mo ago

Once i had a very amusing discusson with a store that sold laptops. I wanted to purchase a laptop at the advertised price. The sales person told me i was in luck, because all their laptops came preinstalled with Microsoft Office for a little extra money. I told him politely i did not want to buy Microsoft Office, even for such little extra money. I just wanted the laptop. Semi-flabbergasted he told me this was not possible, because all the laptops had Office pre-installed. I told him i did not care and wanted to buy the laptop for the adverstised price. After 15 minutes of discussion, some manager came frustrated what the problem was. I pointed to the price tag and told him i wanted to buy the laptop for that price exactly and if that was possible. It was, but it would require uninstalling Office, which took them another 15 minutes. So i waited for another 15 minutes so they could remove Office. Back at home i powered on the laptop, popped in a usb disk and removed every partition that its harddisk ever had and started a nice fresh install without any bloatware.

cbdevidal 10mo ago
The irony is even though Dollar Tree prices are honest because they all are the same $1.25 (excluding the new “More Choices” $3-5 items) they’re still ripping you off. I always shop on a per-unit basis e.g. dollars per pound or cents per ounce, since that’s how I actually eat food. I need a certain amount of calories and a certain quantity of food to survive, and the less I pay per unit, the lower overall cost. On a per-unit basis, DT is almost always the most expensive store around, because quantities are so small! There are of course exceptions; I can recall not long ago for example buying a pound of Himalayan sea salt for a dollar. That was a solid deal, and I haven’t seen it since. But generally speaking, if you want to save money, don’t go to Dollar Tree.
- jtbayly 10mo ago
  Unless you are buying cards. Maybe candy, too? I’d be curious about that.
- schnable 10mo ago
  That's not really a rip off, it caters to people who can't afford to buy in larger quantities.

mvc 10mo ago

How long has this been the law? I lived in Boston for a while and don't remember this.

jefftk 10mo ago
I remember it from at least 2014, and wrote about it in 2019: https://www.jefftk.com/p/ma-price-accuracy-law https://www.jefftk.com/p/ma-price-accuracy-law

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

tadzikpk 10mo ago

I live in MA and wish that this were true, but do you have data / evidence to support that it rarely happens? Also, I don't know if you have tried to get your $10, but it's not like the sign is always obvious and every time I've tried, it's not like the cashier says "oops" and gives you the thing for free - they call a manager, the manager argues with you, other customers complain about the checkout delay you've created... there's social pressure there so I can understand why customers would not do this even when they can.

stronglikedan 10mo ago
> other customers complain about the checkout delay you've created Other customers are complaining about the checkout delay the store created, so I'm not worried about what they think.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
micromacrofoot 10mo ago
If this happens you can file a consumer complaint with the attorney general's office... https://www.mass.gov/how-to/file-a-consumer-complaint https://www.mass.gov/how-to/file-a-consumer-complaint They do follow up with serial offenders.
jefftk 10mo ago
I've done this many times, and it usually takes about 5min (which sounds short, but isn't really that short). There is social pressure, but it's even stronger on the store than it is on you as a customer.

knowitnone3 10mo ago

so if I find one that is has the wrong price and get $10 off, I could potentially "buy" all of them for free?

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

fy20 10mo ago

Right, as a UK tabloid I'm surprised they didn't mention that the UK has similar laws. If you are overcharged you can ask for a refund, and the store has to honour it: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/somethings-gone-wrong-with-a-purchase/if-something-is-advertised-at-the-wrong-price/ https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/somethings-gone-w... In the 00s I worked for a supermarket that would always honour the price on the label if you pointed out an error (we'd then remove the label with the error). We had teams that would regularly check all the labels to make sure they are not out of date. Nowadays many stores where I live now use e-paper displays that update automatically.