If signed, more than 8 million residents will be protected from this pricing tactic
New York, New York – The New York City Council today is expected to pass key legislation (Int. 0891-2026) that would ban surveillance pricing, also known as personalized pricing, for more than 8 million residents. Consumer Reports recently submitted a letter to the council, calling on them to strengthen the legislation.
If the bill passes, it will head to Mayor Mamdani for his signature. If he signs the bill into law, New York will become the second city and fifth jurisdiction in the nation to outlaw surveillance pricing, after Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Seattle, WA.
Over the past two years, CR has brought public awareness to this issue by publishing investigations into algorithmic and personalized pricing. CR’s policy team has assisted lawmakers in more than 10 states and cities as they pursue personalized pricing bans.
“Living in New York is already expensive enough. The last thing New Yorkers need is algorithms quietly hiking prices on everyday essentials. Nobody should pay more just because a data broker is tracking what they search for, what they hover over, or where they live,” said Grace Gedye, senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports. “The price you see shouldn’t be different based on who you are. While there are additional consumer protections we would like to see, Speaker Julie Menin and the City Council have made progress on this affordability issue with this bill. We hope Governor Hochul, and other leaders across the country, build on this work by enacting stronger laws.”
Ahead of today’s final vote, Consumer Reports reached out to the council, urging them to eliminate key loopholes and strengthen the bill by:
- Shielding neighborhoods from location-based markups: The bill permits retailers to use consumer location data to personalize a price under the guise of local supply and demand. For example, residents of a neighborhood with poor transit access and limited grocery options could be charged a higher price for grocery delivery: they have fewer alternatives, so their demand for grocery delivery might persist even at a higher price point relative to neighborhoods with many grocers
- Protecting loyal customers’ purchase history: The bill permits the use of consumers’ shopping history—which can be used to profile shoppers and infer information about their family, income, and lifestyle—to set different discounts for different individual shoppers. For example, a retailer running a discount on diapers might exclude a shopper who frequently purchases infant products online in the middle of the night and selects rush delivery, reasoning that this shopper is a desperate parent who doesn’t have time to comparison shop, and therefore has a higher willingness to pay.
While the council did not resolve these issues, they did change language around the enforcement of the bill, which CR had also called on them to do, and addressed some of CR’s concerns by doing so.
The City Council’s expected passage of the bill builds on momentum across New York following the state legislature’s passage of the One Fair Price Act in June. That bill is currently awaiting action by Governor Kathy Hochul. Governor Hochul has the power to strengthen or weaken that bill as a condition of her signature. In late October, Consumer Reports, joined by a coalition of consumer protection organizations, sent a letter to the Governor urging her to strengthen and sign the measure. State-level action by Governor Hochul that pre-empts New York City law could weaken or strip New York City residents of their potential new rights.
Background:
Other states and cities have taken action to sign bills into law to ban the practice of surveillance pricing, including Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Seattle.
In May 2025, Consumer Reports investigated Kroger’s consumer data practices and found that they were collecting vast data profiles for individual shoppers, with inferences about their income, family size, education level, gender, and more. One shopper who requested their data under a state privacy law received a 62-page profile.
In December 2025, CR, along with partners Groundwork Collaborative and More Perfect Union, published an investigation into Instacart’s pricing tactics. CR had nearly 400 consumers shop for the same basket of goods at the same time. Analysis of the shopping data found that consumers were quoted different prices for the same products from the same store at the same time. The investigation found that Instacart’s algorithmic pricing experiments could result in price differences as high as 23% for certain products and could cost families more than $1,200 a year at checkout. Soon after, Instacart announced in a company blog post that it would end the program that resulted in different shoppers being shown different prices for groceries on its platform. However, Instacart told CR that it would still allow its partners—grocery retailers and food brands—to test different types of promotions and discounts on their customers through the platform.
CR’s most recent investigation of Uber and Lyft’s AI-driven pricing tactics found that the companies routinely charge different customers significantly different prices for the same rides ordered within minutes of each other. CR also found that both apps regularly advertised supposed discounts off what appeared to be inflated original prices. (Note: CR defines “same rides” as trips from the same starting point to the same destination priced within minutes—and often seconds—of one another.)
Additional information on Consumer Reports’ campaign to Make the Price Right can be found here.
Contact: cyrus.rassool@consumer.org