FTC Investigates Companies for Potential Price Discrimination
Federal regulators have announced a new inquiry aimed at understanding whether major airlines, ride-hailing services, delivery apps, and retailers utilize personal data to charge customers different prices for identical products and services or to decide on gig workers’ pay rates.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revealed it has initiated this investigation involving nine companies, requesting details about how they leverage consumer and worker personal data in their pricing and compensation strategies.
The companies under scrutiny include Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, JetBlue, Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, Target, and Walmart, as stated by the FTC.
The agency’s goal is to comprehend if prices for airline tickets, rides, food deliveries, and other goods or services fluctuate across different customers.
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Regulators will investigate how factors like loyalty programs and advanced data analysis might impact consumer pricing and worker earnings.
“We plan to scrutinize the unclear methods that some companies may employ to decide what consumers pay or how much gig workers earn for the same product or service,” said FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson in a statement.
“Consumers deserve to know if their browsing habits or other personal information are used to devise the highest prices they can be charged,” he added.
According to Ferguson, workers “should be informed if their pay is influenced by how companies manage their personal data.”
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The FTC’s announcement highlighted that companies in the ride-hailing and food delivery sectors might offer different pay based on “opaque formulas.” These firms might even customize compensation using drivers’ personal data, like phone activity or past offer acceptance rates.
An Instacart representative responded to these claims, asserting that the online grocery service “does not and will not adopt surveillance pricing,” and emphasized that they do not utilize personal data to adjust prices.
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JetBlue, another company under investigation, stated it doesn’t use customers’ personal information or browsing behavior to determine fare prices, asserting that ticket prices are dictated by demand and seat availability.
“We value the FTC’s attention on this issue, and we aim to maintain transparency while enhancing affordability for our customers. We’ll keep engaging with policymakers and regulators to clarify how our pricing operates,” JetBlue asserted.
Delta also denied using personal data for individualized fare pricing, stating it has neither employed nor planned to use a pricing method that targets customers with personalized offers derived from their data.
FOX Business has reached out to United, Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Target, and Walmart for their comments on this matter.
The FTC warned that companies that do not comply with their information requests might face legal consequences to ensure cooperation. Each company has 45 days to respond once they receive the request.
