FTC and 20 states sue Dollar General over register overcharges

The Federal Trade Commission and 20 states sued Dollar General on Monday, accusing the discount chain of charging shoppers more at the register than the prices posted on its shelves, tags and advertisements, and asking a federal court to order refunds.

The 95-page complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. It asks the court to stop the pricing practices and to impose civil penalties, and it seeks money back for customers who were overcharged. The FTC and the states allege violations of the FTC Act, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and state consumer protection laws.

Shares of Dollar General fell about 4% after the commission announced the case, CNBC reported. The chain's second-quarter net sales rose 5.2% from a year earlier to $11.3 billion, Retail Dive reported, as higher-income shoppers increasingly turned to the discounter.

What the complaint describes

FTC investigators made undercover purchases at Dollar General stores in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Maryland from January to April, and every purchase rang up higher at the register than the price advertised elsewhere, the complaint says. At one Ohio store on Jan. 16, 13 of 58 items carried a price different from the one on the shelf or product label.

Although Dollar General promises convenience, low prices, and value, the company has routinely charged customers more at the register than the price displayed on shelves, price tags, and advertisements.

Dollar General received more than 29,000 complaints about price honoring between January 2023 and the end of March 2026, the complaint says. It includes partially redacted internal company emails and communications, and it argues that fast-moving register screens make the differences hard for a shopper to catch at the moment of sale.

Dollar General was made aware of the problem through thousands of consumer complaints and failed pricing inspections and has not implemented policies and practices to adequately address it, the FTC said in its announcement on Monday.

Households earning $35,000 or less account for about 60% of Dollar General's total revenue, the lawsuit says. The company operates more than 20,000 stores nationwide and describes itself as America's neighborhood general store. It markets itself as a low-priced alternative to large discount and big-box retailers.

The company's answer

Dollar General said its goal is 100% accuracy between shelf and register prices, and that occasional discrepancies can occur despite its policies. When one does, store teams are instructed and expected to make it right for the customer, and the company has enhanced its price-accuracy processes in recent years.

The company said it learned of the investigation in early February through a civil investigative demand dated Jan. 30, 2026, and that it produced more than 200,000 documents and over 350 gigabytes of data and made representatives available for sworn testimony. FTC staff sent a draft complaint and a draft settlement order on Sept. 23, three days after that testimony ended.

The lawsuit filed today by the Federal Trade Commission and several States suggests that we have abandoned our mission and willfully disregarded the affordability needs of our customers. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Dollar General said FTC staff demanded a monetary figure far larger than any realistic assessment of the amounts attributable to pricing discrepancies, and that no settlement demand or investigative findings had been put to the company before that draft arrived. It said it was surprised the commission and the states sued instead of responding to a counteroffer.

The announcements did not put a dollar figure on the total overcharges; the complaint describes them as millions of dollars. Dollar General's statement did not say how many of its stores had pricing errors, or how large the FTC's monetary demand was.

Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement on Monday that Dollar General had betrayed the trust of millions of consumers and imposed financial harm on people already struggling to make their paychecks last.

What state inspectors found

North Carolina inspectors found 400 pricing inaccuracies at 10 Dollar General locations across 28 inspections over a two-year period, Attorney General Jeff Jackson said at a news conference on Tuesday. More than a million North Carolinians shop at the chain every week, he said. The state has more than 1,000 Dollar General stores, with at least one in nearly every town, according to the North Carolina Department of Justice.

The North Carolina Department of Agriculture fined 10 Dollar General locations in eight counties, it announced on Oct. 19,, accusing them of overcharging customers. The department also fined nine stores belonging to other companies for price-scanning errors. Jackson said the chain was "ripping people off" and had been told repeatedly to fix the mistakes.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said the chain had repeatedly mislabeled prices or failed to honor advertised prices at thousands of stores despite extensive corporate knowledge of the problem. The other states joining the FTC are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin.

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said her office is finalizing a separate settlement with Dollar General over the same allegations, after the state sued the company in 2023. A state investigation that year checked prices on more than 50 products at 147 Missouri stores. Undercover buys found about a $7 difference between the total of the shelf prices and the average shopper's ticket, Hanaway told First Alert 4.

A spot check in Illinois

First Alert 4 checked prices at a Dollar General in Granite City, Illinois. Bounty paper towels marked at $6 on the shelf rang up at $6, and Pedigree dog food marked at $1.80 rang up at $1.80. A bottle of Tilex cleaner marked at $5.95 was charged at $6.

Three shoppers told the station they had not been overcharged at that store. One of them, Asia Smith, said she uses coupons there to save money and that she speaks up when she notices something wrong.

Dollar General said its locations sit within five miles of approximately 75% of the U.S. population, many of them in areas other retailers have chosen not to serve. Chief Executive Todd Vasos told analysts in August that the mature store base is an advantage in smaller, rural communities.

The suit comes as shoppers look for discounts against elevated food and gas prices, and as officials across the political spectrum work to show what they are doing about high costs before the Nov. 3 midterm election, CNBC reported.

North Carolina officials told shoppers to check receipts before leaving the store and to ask staff to correct a price when they are charged more than the posted amount. Complaints can be filed with the state Department of Agriculture Consumer Services' Standards Division through its online form or by calling 984-236-4750.

Where the case stands

The complaint says the chain has charged more at the register than the prices listed in its circulars, on digital channels and on in-store displays, conduct it describes as harming the very consumers Dollar General claims to serve.

Nessel said the FTC and the states, working together, could put an end to the deceptive practices and restore some truth in pricing across the country.

Dollar General said it met each of the FTC's deadlines in the four weeks after the draft arrived and agreed to many of the commission's non-monetary undertakings. It said it will defend the lawsuit vigorously and remains willing to discuss a resolution. The company did not say whether talks have resumed since the filing.