January 6, 2026
Your Grocery Store Knows
What You'll Pay
How algorithmic surveillance pricing is charging different customers different amounts for the same products.
Investigators put a room full of people together. Everyone ordered the same 20 items to the same address. Each from their personal phone. Instacart gave everyone different prices.
After five months of investigation, More Perfect Union uncovered something bigger than one app. They found a system. One that grocery stores and tech companies built together. It learns from every purchase. And its primary goal is to maximize profit.
After being caught, Instacart denied using dynamic pricing. Then quietly announced they'd stop adjusting prices based on data.
The System Behind the Prices
This isn't about supply and demand. It's about data extraction. Your purchase history. Your location. Your device. Your browsing behavior. All of it feeds an algorithm designed to find the maximum price you'll pay.
The FTC has launched an investigation into "surveillance pricing," the practice of using personal data to set individualized prices. But while regulators study the problem, the systems are already deployed.
It's Not Just Online
Some grocery stores have cameras everywhere. They track you through the store using facial recognition. They know your past purchases. They watch what you look at and how long. They assess how you're dressed, your physique, your apparent state of health.
AI instantly assesses all of it. In real time.
Electronic shelf labels can change prices as you approach them. The same item can cost different amounts depending on when you shop, how you look, and what the system predicts about your willingness to pay.
The Pattern Is Everywhere
Airlines pioneered it. Hotels refined it. Concert tickets normalized it. Now it's coming for everything else.
Prices change by the minute based on search history, device type, and perceived urgency.
Room rates adjust based on local events, your loyalty status, and how many times you've viewed the page.
"I have my kids buy tickets. They try to charge me double for the same seats."
Add items to your cart but don't buy? Watch the price drop in your email. Or rise if you seem committed.
If people want to stop this, we need to return to a primarily cash-based society. Sadly, too many people survive on credit.
Once everything has to be purchased electronically, they have complete control over what we buy and how much we pay for it.
The problem isn't the algorithm.
The problem is the intent.
The Trust Problem
Personalization and dynamic pricing aren't inherently wrong. Airlines selling last-minute seats cheaper than they'd otherwise go empty? That's efficient. Offering loyal customers better rates? That's fair.
But using data to find the maximum each person will pay? To exploit information asymmetry for extraction? That's different. That breaks trust. And trust, once broken, doesn't come back easily.
People are already adapting. They're using VPNs. Clearing cookies. Having their kids buy tickets. Shopping in incognito mode. Every workaround is a signal that the relationship between business and customer is broken.
Corporations will stop at nothing to get a profit. This isn't a failure of regulation. It's a failure of design ethics.
Every workaround customers develop is a signal that the system was designed against them.
What This Means for Product Design
The same data that enables surveillance pricing could enable something else: transparent, fair, trust-building commerce. The choice is in the design.
Companies that use data to serve customers (not extract from them) will have a structural advantage as awareness grows. Trust is becoming a differentiator.
We believe:
- 1Data should serve users, not exploit them. Personalization is powerful. Extraction is corrosive.
- 2Pricing should be explainable. If you can't justify a price to a customer's face, you shouldn't charge it.
- 3Trust compounds. Short-term extraction destroys long-term relationships. Design for the long game.
- 4Transparency is a feature. The companies that show their work will win as customers become more aware.
What We Build
Transparent Commerce
E-commerce and retail platforms where pricing logic is clear and fair.
Loyalty Systems
Programs that reward customers without exploiting their data.
Subscription Platforms
Billing systems designed for clarity, not confusion.
Data-Ethical Products
Applications that use personalization to serve, not extract.
Are you designing for trust?
Or optimizing for extraction?
Share this perspective
Investigation and reporting from More Perfect Union via Wall Street Apes, January 2026. The FTC is actively investigating surveillance pricing practices including Instacart's use of the Eversight pricing tool.
More Insights
Perspectives on product design, technology, and the forces shaping how people interact with the things we build.
The backlash against surveillance pricing is just beginning. The companies that build for trust now will define commerce for the next decade.