"On a cloudy winter day, a state government inspector named Ryan Coffield walked into a Family Dollar store in Windsor, North Carolina, carrying a scanner gun and a laptop. Inside the store, which sits along a three-lane road in a county of peanut growers and poultry workers, Coffield scanned 300 items and recorded their shelf prices. He carried the scanned bar codes to the cashier and watched as item after item rang up at a higher price."
"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 Some of the price tags were months out of date.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."
An inspector scanned 300 items at a Family Dollar in Windsor, North Carolina, and recorded their shelf prices. Sixty-nine items rang up at higher prices, a 23% error rate that exceeded the state's limit by more than tenfold. Some shelf tags were months out of date. The January 2023 inspection was the store's fourth consecutive failure, and the state department of agriculture and consumer services had previously fined the store. North Carolina caps penalties at $5,000 per inspection, which can make paying fines cheaper than correcting pricing. Dollar-store chains promise low prices, yet shelf-to-register price discrepancies occur, disproportionately affecting low-income shoppers.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]