FTC and 20 States Sue Dollar General, Accusing the Chain of Charging More at the Register Than on the Shelves

The Federal Trade Commission and 20 states have sued Dollar General, the largest dollar-store chain in the United States, accusing it of persistently overcharging customers. The company operates more than 20,000 stores across the United States.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Nashville. It cites an investigative report published by The Guardian last December, and the complaint says much of the case rests on what that investigation found.

The 95-page legal complaint says: "Dollar General has for years engaged in deceptive conduct that harms the very consumers it claims to serve."

According to the complaint, although Dollar General promises convenience, low prices and value, the company has routinely charged customers more at the register than the prices displayed on shelves, price tags and advertisements. The lawsuit says this pattern of inaccurate pricing has persisted for years and affects millions of purchases across the country, and it describes the scope of the retail chain's "pricing misconduct" as "staggering".

The FTC is the federal agency charged with protecting consumers from deceptive, unfair and anticompetitive business practices. State authorities from Mississippi to Ohio to Nebraska to Utah have joined the case as plaintiffs.

Dollar General did not respond to questions for this story, but has previously said that it was "committed to providing customers with accurate prices on items purchased in our stores".

The Guardian's investigation, published in December 2025, found that Dollar General stores failed more than 4,300 government price-accuracy inspections in 23 states over a three-year period. The lawsuit said that article "was the subject of significant internal deliberation and discussions" within the company.

According to the lawsuit, Dollar General has policies that are supposed to align register prices with shelf prices; for example, it directs employees to remove and replace outdated labels on certain days of the week.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.

The lawsuit 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."

The FTC 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 told the Guardian in 2025 that it is "disappointed" any time it fails to deliver on its commitment to accurate shelf pricing. In court documents in Ohio, Dollar General's lawyers have argued that "it is virtually impossible for a retailer to match shelf pricing and scanned pricing 100% of the time for all items", and that perfection in this regard is neither plausible nor expected under the law.

In a statement accompanying the FTC lawsuit, the federal agency 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, the New York attorney general, Letitia James, announced 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.