How the dollar-store industry overcharges cash-strapped customers while promising low prices

‘As the cost of living soars across America, the customers bearing the burden are those who can least afford it.’ Composite: Rita Liu/The Guardian/Cornell Watson/Kelly Burgess/Getty Images

On a cloudy winter day, a state government inspector named Ryan Coffield walked into a Family Dollar store in Windsor, North Carolina, carrying a scanner gun and a laptop.

Inside the store, which sits along a three-lane road in a county of peanut growers and poultry workers, Coffield scanned 300 items and recorded their shelf prices. He carried the scanned bar codes to the cashier and watched as item after item rang up at a higher price.