FTC cites more than 4,300 failed Dollar General price-accuracy inspections

Workers cited understaffing for delays in replacing labels

The Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit against Dollar General, filed in federal court in Nashville in October 2026, cites a December 2025 Guardian investigation that found Dollar General stores failed more than 4,300 government price-accuracy inspections in 23 states over a three-year period. The lawsuit said the investigation article “was the subject of significant internal deliberation and discussions” within Dollar General. The FTC said its allegations were consistent with the investigation.

The 95-page complaint says Dollar General “has for years engaged in deceptive conduct that harms the very consumers it claims to serve.” It alleges that, although the company promises convenience, low prices and value, it routinely charged customers more at the register than prices displayed on shelves, price tags and advertisements. The complaint says the pattern has persisted for years and affects millions of purchases across the country, and calls the scope of the chain’s “pricing misconduct” “staggering.”

The FTC and 20 states brought the case against the nation’s largest dollar-store chain, which has more than 20,000 stores across the United States. State authorities from Mississippi, Ohio, Nebraska and Utah joined as plaintiffs. The FTC is the federal agency charged with protecting consumers from deceptive, unfair and anticompetitive business practices.

The agency noted in the lawsuit that Dollar General has policies intended to align register prices with shelf prices. One policy directs employees to remove and replace outdated labels on certain days of the week. The complaint says Dollar General’s “on-paper policies to update pricing achieve little in practice” because “they do not track whether the printed labels are actually affixed to shelves.”

Workers told The Guardian that understaffing often left them too busy to change those labels. The FTC also cited a Guardian interview with a lead sales associate in Louisiana, who said: “I threw away tags sometimes, to keep me or a co-worker out of trouble.”

Dollar General did not respond to questions for the story. It previously said it was “committed to providing customers with accurate prices on items purchased in our stores,” and told The Guardian in 2025 that it was “disappointed” any time it failed to deliver on its commitment to accurate shelf pricing.

In court documents in Ohio, Dollar General’s lawyers argued that “it is virtually impossible for a retailer to match shelf pricing and scanned pricing 100% of the time for all items. Perfection in this regard is neither plausible nor expected under the law.”

Accompanying the lawsuit, the FTC noted that Dollar General markets itself as a low-cost alternative to other retailers and that low- and fixed-income customers rely on the accuracy of its price labels. Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection, said: “Dollar General has betrayed the trust of millions of American consumers and imposed significant financial harm on communities and consumers who are already struggling to make their paychecks last.”

In a separate case, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced earlier this month that Dollar General had agreed to a $1.875 million deal to settle allegations that it had repeatedly overcharged customers across New York. The federal lawsuit alleges conduct across the country, while the separate agreement addresses allegations within New York.