Dollar General hasn’t lived up to its name, and has in fact bamboozled consumers out of many of their hard-earned dollars, according to a new complaint from the Federal Trade Commission.
As of this week, the national discount retailer faces a lawsuit from the FTC and 20 states across the nation that allege that it engaged in a long-term deceptive pricing scheme. Dollar General Corporation routinely charged shoppers more at the register than the prices it displayed on its shelves and price tags and in its ads, resulting in millions of dollars of overcharges, the complaint said.
Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin cosigned the federal government’s allegations.
“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,” said Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The FTC’s action underscores the agency’s commitment to lowering costs for consumers by stopping deceptive pricing practices that harm Americans.”
Dollar General, with over 21,000 stores across the country, has operated for nearly a century on the premise of offering lower prices than larger discount stores and big-box retailers. It has also invested heavily in same-day delivery services in recent years, allowing it to compete with e-commerce giants like Amazon in rural or underserved communities without plentiful access to retail. Around 80 percent of Dollar General locations are situated in towns of 20,000 or less, and 75 percent of the country lives within five miles of a Dollar General store.
But the complaint alleges that the company hasn’t made good on promise its name denotes. Instead, it has “taken advantage of vulnerable shoppers by extracting millions of dollars in unlawful overcharges with insufficient safeguards to prevent the practice,” it read.
What’s more, the suit alleges that corporate leadership knew about the issue and allowed Dollar General to perpetuate the mislabeling. Consumers brought the issue to the attention of the company, with at least 29,265 complaints filed between Jan. 1, 2023 and March 31, 2026 claiming that it failed to honor the prices it advertised across all 48 states in which it operates.
Despite being made aware of the issue, the company has not enacted new policies or erected safeguards to protect consumers from such harms, the suit said. That’s particularly damning given that Dollar General’s consumer base, as its CEO, Todd Vasos, described it, is comprised of low- or fixed-income households that “run out of money before the month runs out,” the suit said.
The FTC wrote that these practices are in violation of the FTC Act, which addresses unfair or deceptive acts or practices, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which addresses the handling of consumer information, as well as multiple state laws.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, the lawsuit asks the court to file a permanent injunction against Dollar General for the deceptive and abusive practices and to make the plaintiffs whole through monetary relief and restitution.