Dollar Tree has long been a favorite of bargain hunters, but that may not be the case much longer.
While the store caused some minor upset when it raised prices to $1.25, most people adjusted pretty well to the change – especially in light of the fact that items were still very reasonable, given the inflation occurring at the time.
Then, Dollar Tree started to add some items with even higher price tags, with some items selling for $3 or even $5. Again, there was a bit of grumbling about the store losing its focus, but most of these mid-priced items were definitely of higher quality and justified their more premium price tag.
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Now, however, customers are being pushed over the edge because Dollar Tree is selling some items for truly exorbitant prices.
Worse yet, the items are absolutely not a good value. When customers removed the Dollar Tree sticker on the items, they discovered these products are actually selling for much more than the marked suggested price.
This apparent bait-and-switch has left customers absolutely furious as they wonder both when Dollar Tree started selling items that are 20 times as expensive as expected and why the store is marking them up for substantially more than the manufacturer says to charge.
The big question is whether this is a one-off or a new trend that consumers need to watch for to make sure they aren’t being ripped off.
Customers were taken aback by a recent Dollar Tree pricing strategy.
Image source: Shutterstock
Dollar Tree items with a $20 price tag ?
Concerns about the new Dollar Tree pricing strategy came to light as a result of a news article published by 1420 WBSM. Reporter Tim Weisberg experienced the pricing issue personally when visiting a Dollar Tree location in Fairhaven, Mass.
Weisberg said that when he visited Dollar Tree, he saw light-up LED inflatables, including a witchy-spider, a ghost, a pumpkin, and a skeleton. Shockingly, the price tag on the items was a very expensive $20 each.
That is a significant step up from the $1.25 or even $3 or $5 items that most people would expect to see at the store, given its name.
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Dollar Tree’s markups are upwards of 50%
As bad as a $20 price tag is, things were even worse than they seemed.
That’s because Weisberg noted something unusual about the price tags — they were written on red stickers. When he pulled off those stickers, he found that the prices underneath listed the Halloween items for sale at just $10 per item.
This means that there was a very substantial 100% markup on the Halloween Decor, pricing them at double the amount the manufacturer had put on the box.
Weisberg wasn’t the only one who spotted this troubling trend, either, as other shoppers had also peeled off the stickers to reveal the lower suggested price on the products.
Will huge markups become a Dollar Tree trend?
Customers were not happy with the troubling Dollar Tree pricing issue, with Facebook commenters saying the store should keep the items at the manfuacturer’s suggested price, urging others to walk out in light of the high markup, and referring to Dollar Tree as “nuts” with this pricing strategy.
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There is some speculation that the items may have come over from Family Dollar, as Dollar Tree recently sold the chain, so this may be leftover merchandise that resulted from that former partnership.
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Still, no one expects or wants a dollar store to sell $20 items, particularly when those items are only worth $10.
Shoppers will need to watch the price tags carefully at Dollar Tree for a while. Hopefully, this outrageous pricing will turn out to be a one-off and not the start of a new, more expensive era at this once-beloved store.
