By Staff Reporter
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — In the spring of 2023, two investigators from the state attorney general’s office went shopping at 11 Dollar General stores in Erie, Monroe, Ontario and Wayne counties. They bought 114 items from the chain’s weekly ad. They were overcharged on 16 of them, about 14 percent, and on some items by close to 40 percent.
Those findings are at the center of a settlement Attorney General Letitia James announced Thursday. Dollar General will donate $1.875 million in food and personal care products to Foodlink, the Rochester food bank, and change how it prices goods and prints receipts in its New York stores. The shoppers who paid too much will not get any money back.
“When New Yorkers see a sale price advertised on the shelf, they should be able to trust that they’ll be charged that same price at the register,” Ms. James said in a statement. “Dollar General regularly charged consumers higher prices than advertised, and the receipts shoppers received were difficult to understand.”
What the records show
The Chronicle reviewed the 28-page agreement, Assurance of Discontinuance No. 26-064, which sets out the attorney general’s findings in more detail than the press release.
The inquiry started with a county official. In January 2023, the director of Wayne County’s Weights and Measures department told the attorney general’s office that 13 of 14 price-accuracy inspections at Dollar General stores between February 2022 and January 2023 had failed, according to the agreement.
The office then gathered 913 inspection reports covering fiscal 2021 through 2023 from 33 county and city Weights and Measures offices. The reports covered 287 stores and 95,539 scanned items. State law requires stores to score at least 98 percent on these checks. Dollar General failed 42 percent of inspections in fiscal 2021, 55 percent in 2022 and 28 percent in 2023, the agreement says.
The investigators’ four largest overcharges, measured against the lowest advertised price, were 39, 38, 26 and 22 percent. They also found shelf tags, print and digital flyers, and digital coupons that did not match the price at checkout.
The receipts did not help. Some listed only an item’s full price, others only the net price after discounts, and some neither. The agreement says the office had to build spreadsheets to work out what its own investigators had paid.
Signage was another problem. State law requires stores to post their overcharge policy conspicuously. When an investigator visited a Dollar General on Routes 5 and 20 in Bloomfield, Ontario County, in March 2023, no such sign was posted. A return visit on April 11, 2025, found there still was none, according to the agreement.
The company’s response
Dollar General, which operates more than 623 stores in New York, neither admitted nor denied the findings, the agreement states.
“Dollar General is committed to providing customers with accurate on-shelf prices on items purchased in our stores, and we are disappointed any time we fail to deliver on this commitment,” the company said in an emailed statement to Moneywise. It added that store teams are “instructed, expected and empowered” to fix pricing errors on the spot.
Where the penalty goes
The civil penalty takes the form of donated goods, not cash. Foodlink will distribute them through its network of pantries and meal programs.
“Too many households are being forced to make difficult choices between food, housing, transportation, and other essentials,” said Julia Tedesco, Foodlink’s president and chief executive. “This support helps our network respond quickly and ensures more of our neighbors can put healthy food on the table.”
Two details in the agreement deserve attention. First, the value of the donation “shall be determined by their retail price,” meaning Dollar General’s own shelf prices. The company’s actual cost to supply $1.875 million in goods will be lower. Second, the company has 18 months to finish the donations.
The investigators shopped in Erie County, among other places. Foodlink, however, serves a 10-county region centered on Rochester, the Finger Lakes Times reported. Buffalo’s food bank, FeedMore WNY, is not named in the agreement.
What changes in the stores
Under the settlement, Dollar General must honor the lowest listed price whenever the shelf, flyer and register disagree. It must post signs saying so in every New York store and train all employees on price accuracy. Receipts must show the discount on each item, and that redesign has an 18-month deadline. An independent auditor will make unannounced price checks at every store twice a fiscal year and run 15 more random audits a year comparing ad prices with register prices. Any error found must be fixed within 24 hours.
A pattern in other states
New York is not the first state to reach this kind of settlement with the chain. Ohio settled for $1 million in 2023, and Pennsylvania reached a $1.5 million settlement in 2025, Moneywise reported.
“Most people don’t shop at Dollar General because they have a lot of extra money to spend,” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said in 2023, according to Moneywise. “So when a bottle of shampoo that should cost $1 costs $2 at the checkout, that’s a real thing.”
What shoppers can do
The settlement does not refund anyone, so the best protection is still at the register. Photograph the shelf tag before checking out, read the receipt before leaving and ask the cashier to correct any overcharge. Under state law, the store must charge the lowest advertised, posted or marked price. Complaints can be filed with the attorney general’s office or with the county Weights and Measures office, whose inspections started this case.
It is still unclear how often county inspectors in Erie and the rest of Western New York check Dollar General stores, and whether those offices have the staff to keep up. Wayne County’s Weights and Measures department, whose warning set this case in motion, is a one-person office, according to the Finger Lakes Times.
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