New York, NY — Following news that New York Attorney General Letitia James is looking into Instacart’s pricing practices, following a investigation from Groundwork Collaborative, More Perfect Union, and Consumer Reports that shed light on the company’s use of differential algorithmic pricing tools, the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.

“The investigation last year laid bare how big corporations are using deceptive pricing tactics to charge consumers different prices for identical items, cheating Americans out of fair and predictable pricing,” said Pat Garofalo, Director of State and Local Policy at the American Economic Liberties Project. “If Instacart, through its acquisition of AI pricing firm Eversight, is in fact pooling transaction data across retailers on its platform to dictate pricing, that raises serious risks of illegal price fixing. We’re encouraged to see Attorney General James digging into the truth of this matter and trust that her office will enforce the law to protect consumers and independent grocers. Policymakers across the country should ban coercive and discriminatory price setting schemes that evade scrutiny under existing laws, including algorithmic price fixing, surveillance pricing and junk fees.”

Learn more about The Fair Price Fight initiative.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; international trade arrangements that promote balanced trade and benefit workers, farmers and small businesses; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.