Consumer Reports, along with four other organizations, sent a letter to Gov. Hochul urging her to strengthen the One Fair Price Act via the chapter amendment process and cautioning her to avoid weakening it. The letter is signed by the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Groundwork Collaborative, and TechEquity Action. For the full letter, see the link above.
The One Fair Price Act would prohibit personalized pricing, also known as surveillance pricing, in New York. If enacted, New York would become the fifth jurisdiction to enact a ban on personalized pricing, after Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Seattle, WA.
The letter explains the rise of personalized pricing, including evidence from investigations by journalists and the Federal Trade Commission. It points to a loophole in the bill around the use of consumers’ location data to set prices, as well as problems with the exemption for the use of purchase history data in setting discounts. Lastly, it walks through some of the amendments that business groups have requested be made to similar legislation in other states, and it explains how those changes would seriously undermine the bill.
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 paying 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.