FTC and 20 States Sue Dollar General Over Register Overcharges

The Federal Trade Commission and 20 states filed a federal lawsuit in Nashville on October 26, 2026, against Dollar General.

The complaint alleges the discount retailer persistently charged customers more than advertised prices at its more than 20,000 U.S. stores.

The 95-page legal document states that the company routinely charged higher amounts at the register than on shelf tags, price labels, and advertisements.

The plaintiffs describe the scope of this pricing misconduct as staggering, noting the pattern has persisted for years.

The lawsuit cites a December 2025 investigation by The Guardian, which found that Dollar General failed over 4,300 government price-accuracy inspections in 23 states over a three-year period.

The FTC alleges that while Dollar General has policies to align register prices with shelf prices, the system fails in practice because staff do not track whether printed labels are actually affixed to shelves.

The complaint notes that employees often skip label updates due to understaffing, with one Louisiana lead sales associate telling The Guardian, "I threw away tags sometimes, to keep me or a co-worker out of trouble."

Dollar General did not respond to questions for this story, though the company previously stated it is committed to providing accurate prices.

In court documents in Ohio, the company’s lawyers argued that matching shelf and scanned pricing 100% of the time is virtually impossible and not expected by law.

Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection, said in a statement that the retailer betrayed the trust of millions of consumers.

He noted that low- and fixed-income customers rely heavily on the accuracy of price labels at discount stores.

In a separate legal matter, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced earlier this month that Dollar General agreed to a $1.875 million settlement regarding similar overcharging allegations in the state.