Surveillance Pricing

Surveillance Pricing

From Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons Podcast by Carey Parker

March 16, 2026 · 1h 5m

About this episode

The episode discusses the concept of surveillance pricing and a study on its implications conducted by Consumer Reports and More Perfect Union.

When you shop online or through an app, do you ever wonder if you’re being charged the same as someone else for the same thing? Even controlling for things like shipping address and local taxes, it turns out that today it’s not uncommon for pricing to dynamically change based on factors that may not seem fair. This is called surveillance pricing. Justin Brookman (Consumer Reports) and Eric Gardner (More Perfect Union) recently performed a study on this practice using Instacart, and the results were eye-opening. Interview Notes Surveillance pricing study: https://www.consumerreports.org/money/questionable-business-practices/instacart-ai-pricing-experiment-inflating-grocery-bills-a1142182490/ Study video (Instagram): https://www.instagram.com/reels/DSC1w_Hjng6/ Study video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osxr7xSxsGo Consumer Reports: https://www.consumerreports.org/ More Perfect Union: https://perfectunion.us/ Get involved: https://action.consumerreports.org/ Instacart’s AI-Enabled Pricing Experiments May Be Inflating Your Grocery Bill…

People in this episode

Guests: Justin Brookman, Eric Gardner

Topics covered

  • surveillance pricing
  • dynamic pricing
  • online shopping

Keywords

  • Instacart
  • Consumer Reports
  • More Perfect Union

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Instacart

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