The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is demanding some of the US’s biggest airlines, ride-share companies and retailers divulge how they are using algorithms and loyalty programs to target customers and drivers with different prices and wages.
Nine companies – Delta, United, JetBlue, Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, Target and Walmart – were named in the inquiry, which comes after investigations and lawsuits alleging consumers are charged different prices based on their buying histories and drivers paid different fares based on their personal histories.
The FTC will “scrutinize the opaque methodology that some companies in these industries may be using to determine how much consumers pay or how much gig workers are paid for the same product or service”, chair Andrew Ferguson said in a statement.
US family budgets already burdened by inflation are being gouged by opaque and sometimes deceptive store pricing practices, including surveillance pricing and overcharges by Dollar General and convenience stores.
The FTC is tasked with policing “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” in industries except banking and airlines, which means it can not impose any fines or regulations on the airlines named. While the Trump administration has rolled back corporate regulations, the FTC’s consumer protection division has joined with states in some instances to pursue legal action and penalties against some companies.
Companies must “turn over information that will allow the agency to assess whether the pricing for a ticket, ride share, food delivery or other product or service varies from one person to the next based on factors such as participation in loyalty programs or analysis of personal data by super-intelligence algorithms”, the FTC said.
Several states have begun introducing legislation to ban surveillance pricing and electronic shelf labels that could be used to set different prices based on shoppers habits and online information.
The investigation follows a July 2024 inquiry by the Biden administration into surveillance pricing, which demanded information from McKinsey, JPMorgan Chase and others that offered surveillance pricing products to consumer-facing companies.
“Details like a person’s precise location or browser history can be frequently used to target individual consumers with different prices for the same goods and services,” the FTC found in January 2025.
Whether the inquiry will result in substantial changes in consumer laws or company practices is unclear.
“What we have seen so far is that they have not been using these studies that produce meaningful reports that ultimately lead to any rule-making changes,” said Rohit Chopra, a former FTC commissioner who is now head of California’s new Business and Consumer Protection Agency.