00:00:30.000getting scammed is starting to feel like one of the most american things in the world
00:00:44.240like that's our apple pie now it's absolutely you know um lindsey owens the author of gouge
00:00:51.680yep thank you so much for joining us today you are a kind of a a consumer advocate and a watchdog
00:00:58.860You had a group called Groundwork Collaborative, which does what exactly?
00:01:03.100We're a think tank in Washington, D.C., and a think tank is sort of a silly word that only people in Washington, D.C. use.
00:01:08.980But basically, we do research and investigations, including investigations of corporate America, to try to influence policy, to try to help policymakers know exactly how to pass laws to stop us from getting ripped off, to help policymakers see what's happening to America on the ground.
00:01:26.140Yeah, because everything feels like you're getting ripped off now.
00:01:28.560It feels like our country's getting ripped off.
00:01:34.100They're like, you know, people, it's just like, it's become like an infection that we're just being taken advantage of at every possible point.
00:03:20.260algorithmic pricing, surveillance pricing. Let's go through what is first, just so people know,
00:03:24.800what is price gouging? Yeah. The legal definition of price gouging is when a company or an individual
00:03:31.280overcharges you during an emergency. So you've got a hurricane and you've got the last four
00:03:37.480gallons of water, you know, you charge a hundred dollars a gallon, right? That's the legal definition
00:03:42.320of price gouging. I also think most Americans have like a duck test version of price gouging,
00:03:48.060right? A duck test? Yeah. Like it quacks like a duck. It walks like a duck. It's a duck. Like
00:03:52.480you know, when you're being ripped off, like, you know, when someone's cheating you, like we
00:03:55.720intuitively have a sense, like this price doesn't sit right with us. Yeah, for sure. And I, you know,
00:04:01.560I think it's fine to use the phrase price gouging in those scenarios as well. Yeah. And now even it
00:04:06.980seems like, I don't know, it feels like everything is in cahoots these days. Like if a larger entity
00:04:12.200owns not only a weather channel, but they also own a chain store, and then they also own a media
00:04:20.480outlet, then they can create a narrative that there's a storm coming or something. Then they
00:04:25.400can adjust the price. They can just do it all themselves. It even feels like it's gotten that
00:04:29.840dark. What is dynamic pricing? Yeah. So dynamic pricing is when a company changes prices based
00:04:37.760on market conditions. So let's say there's a lot of demand for a world cup ticket or a concert
00:04:43.780ticket. Um, you know, the company will increase the price because they know there are a lot of
00:04:48.460different people looking at that same ticket and they think they can charge it to you.
00:04:52.580Like ticket, like, is that something you see with ticket master? Is that ticket master started
00:04:56.760using dynamic pricing in 2011, which was the same year that Uber started using dynamic pricing.
00:05:01.840Like when I was a kid, you stood in line for concert tickets. Right. And like,
00:05:05.740if there were two tickets left, like the last two people in line got the tickets at face value.
00:05:10.820They didn't like stop and say, okay, there's 60 people left in line. Who's like, we're going to
00:05:17.080sell this ticket, last two tickets to the highest bidder. Right. Like that didn't happen. You just
00:05:20.600got the last two tickets at face value. And now they almost always auction them off. Right.
00:05:26.620Is that necessarily unfair? It's their, is it their tickets or it's the artist's tickets?
00:05:31.680Yeah, look, you know, you can decide if you think it is fair to auction tickets off to the highest bidder, right? It's a decision that you can make if you're using dynamic pricing. And there are a lot of economists who will tell you that auctioning off tickets is the most efficient way to allocate scarce resources, because the person who's willing to pay the most probably wants the ticket the most, and they should get the ticket, right?
00:05:56.640But I think most Americans disagree and they think that everyone should have an equal shot at a ticket, right?
00:06:02.380They like a first-come, first-served model or a line.
00:06:06.800Sometimes, you know, you put your name in a hat and then the first 100 people get plucked out.
00:06:11.700That's another way to allocate a scarce resource that feels more fair to a lot of us.
00:06:16.760But these days, you know, more often than not, almost always you're going to see dynamic pricing and you're going to see, you know, what is effectively an auction.
00:06:25.060But I think for me, the really crazy part is now companies are using dynamic pricing in all sorts of areas where there isn't scarcity, right?
00:06:35.680They're just like changing prices in the grocery store.
00:07:10.740Yeah, this is a little, this is the Walmart take on their electronic shelf labels.
00:07:14.840Digital shelf labels are simply electronic price displays that replace paper tags on
00:07:18.440the shelf edge, similar to the digital displays customers have seen for years at gas stations.
00:07:22.640Prices are still set the same way they always have been centrally by Walmart following our everyday low price strategy with an associate reviewing approved changes.
00:07:33.160What problem do you see with these DS, with the digital shelf labels?
00:07:53.060And, you know, Walmart has been pretty clear that they're not planning to do this.
00:07:56.140But the concern is, you know, it's hot outside.
00:07:59.240Let me increase the price of ice cream.
00:08:00.880And I can use an algorithm at headquarters that checks weather patterns around the country and matches weather patterns at specific retail locations and hikes the price.
00:12:57.860Let me see. On April 15th, 2026, after four days of deliberation, the Manhattan jury found that Live Nation and Ticketmaster had illegally maintained monopoly power.
00:13:05.900As of October 19th, the case still hasn't reached a final resolution.
00:13:09.940The coalition of states that won has asked the judge to order Live Nation to sell off Ticketmaster.
00:13:14.420That's a requested remedy, not an order already issued.
00:13:18.520I mean, this would be the best outcome, right? If Live Nation and Ticketmaster had to split back up.
00:13:23.040And so it wasn't one giant monopoly where they had control of the venues, control of ticket sales, all wrapped up in one.
00:13:31.260And instead, Live Nation and Ticketmaster had to compete with each other and were separate entities.
00:13:35.980Well, it seems like that's what the people want, right?
00:13:39.340Like people have been angry at Ticketmaster for years.
00:13:41.580I know that Pearl Jam had – like that was a thing years ago where it was like we're not selling our tickets on there.
00:13:47.020I know Zach Bryan was doing a thing where he was having people enter like a – put their email in and enter a lottery on one of his tours.
00:13:57.220Yeah, Grunge Rock, Titans, Pearl Jam, Battle with the Business in the 1990s, even filing an anti-monopoly complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice, which declined to bring a case then.
00:14:08.320But how do – like whose fault is this at this point?
00:14:14.400How would something actually change in this case?
00:14:17.020Yeah, look, in this case, the Department of Justice would need to step in and use the authority they have to break up monopolies, right? And to separate these two entities. And that's really what people are looking for. That's what these cases are about. And unfortunately, for decades now, the federal government has basically been Wall Street's playground, right? And corporate America runs roughshod over everything that would help you and I in Washington.
00:14:47.020years, and I saw it firsthand, right? You'd be making some progress on some policy that would
00:14:52.860protect Americans' pocketbooks, right? Let's say we wanted to stop the price gouging or stop the
00:14:57.040surveillance pricing. And, you know, it takes a while for a law to wind its way through Congress.
00:15:03.520And during that time, like armies of lawyers and lobbyists on behalf of corporate America
00:16:09.420I've never gotten a massage, but, like, even, like, when I announced that my book was coming out, my phone started, like, blowing up with lobbyists in town that I hadn't talked to in decades.
00:16:27.720Like, I'd love to take you for a drink.
00:16:29.560And then I would Google them, and I would find that they were working as a lobbyist for Walmart or working as a lobbyist for DoorDash or Instacart or any of the companies in my book.
00:16:39.140It's just it's just this incredibly insidious way in which the deck is really stacked against us and in favor of corporate America.
00:16:48.240And I I just don't think it is going to change until we really, you know, stand up to the fact that corporate America runs Washington.
00:16:57.540What are the ways that we would stand up to that?
00:16:59.920Like, what is an actual standing up to that look like?
00:18:28.120I mean, absolutely. The lobbyists are pushing hard to make sure that they're the CEOs that they represent aren't in the hot seat. Right. That's a big part of the job is making sure that they don't get called before Congress. It's definitely the case that like the gerontocracy is real. And a lot of gerontocracy like what does it mean? Old people running the country. Oh, yeah. Like senators are too old. Right. They don't understand AI technology, for example. Like they don't understand the ways in which new technologies are ripping us off.
00:18:57.700They understand pitiophilia, though, which is crazy.
00:19:03.700A gerontocracy is a form of government, society, and organization in which power is held by leaders who are significantly older than the majority of the population.
00:19:53.460They're asking their staff to print out things to write.
00:19:56.640I mean, it is really time for, I think, a change.
00:20:00.080But, you know, to answer your question, like, you know, for one, like, members of Congress should not be trading stocks because, you know, it's a conflict of interest, right?
00:20:08.500If you're regulating an industry, you're getting all of this insider information.
00:20:12.360And then at night, you're like, oh, telling your wife, oh, hey, you know, buy Palantir or whatever.
00:20:19.220Like, you know, there is no need for our politicians to be wondering, oh, if I actually do something good for the American people, I might risk not getting reelected.
00:20:31.140Like, those two things should be aligned.
00:20:33.200Like, if you do good things, you should get reelected, right?
00:20:35.640If you make my life easier, if you make my life more affordable, like, I should want to reelect you.
00:20:41.180And when politicians are taking money from the very company that is literally, like, reaching its hand into my wallet, then their interests are at odds, right?
00:23:44.600So the craziest experiment that I talk about in the book is an experiment that my organization ran with Consumer Reports and More Perfect Union in December of last year.
00:23:56.120And we ran an experiment on Instacart that exposed that Instacart was running experiments on millions of Americans while they shopped for their groceries.
00:24:09.160I mean, when I used to work retail and like, you know, you were always in fear of the secret shopper, right?
00:24:14.240Oh, yeah, dude. We had some drunk guys that were always like buying turtlenecks or whatever at our pizza plate. And I don't know what it was. Anyway, that doesn't mean anything. But yeah.
00:24:26.460So we, yeah, so we like hired these, like we got these volunteer secret shoppers and we said, all right, like fire up the Instacart app, set your pickup location, like, you know, a Kroger in Nashville, Tennessee, for example, buy these 23 grocery items.
00:25:50.180eggs are already so expensive right now. Well, it's just not fair. It's like, what is the price
00:25:53.740of it? Right. Like it used to be that if you and I went to the grocery store together and we stood
00:25:58.020in line and we both bought a gallon of milk, we would get charged the same amount. Right. And if
00:26:02.220we didn't, like you and I would look at each other and we'd like pull out our receipts and we'd be
00:26:05.840like, one of us, you made a mistake. Like one of us got charged the wrong amount. Right. And now
00:26:10.120it's like, no, that's not a mistake. Like that's the whole ball game. And what was it based on?
00:26:14.000It was based on your location. So we held all of that constant. So same location, same store.
00:26:19.720What we learned is that Instacart, they basically admitted this in their response to us when we released the investigation.
00:26:27.300They were just running experiments to see how much they could charge us for every item in the cart.
00:26:33.100And so they were just testing the outer bounds of like, you know, how much they could get away with charging for eggs, how much for milk.
00:26:40.700Like, you know, if you were making a sandwich, they were trying to test how much they could get you to fork over for every single item in the sandwich.
00:26:47.640Like the deli meat, the mustard, the lettuce, the tomato, the bread, right?
00:26:55.260They said, oh, yeah, this is just like our typical A-B testing that we do to, like, make life more affordable for Americans who are shopping on Instacart.
00:27:03.320But they were letting people pay the higher prices.
00:27:05.560They weren't just having it be, wow, that's not—
00:27:08.680Like, they were definitely charging the prices in the experiment.
00:27:12.200And were they getting people's consent to do that?
00:27:14.220Do they have to have people's consent?
00:27:15.520No, you definitely didn't consent to this. And in fact, part of the reason that we knew that Instacart was doing this, like we designed our experiment expecting to be able to expose their experiment, is because they had purchased an AI company called Eversight.
00:27:31.200And Eversight's entire reason for existence was that they built software to help companies run experiments on you without your knowledge. Like that's the whole ballgame.
00:32:30.180And he gives an interview to a Brazilian magazine and he announces in that interview or kind of, you know, brags about the fact that they are piloting installing thermometers in Coke vending machines so that they can charge you more for Coke on a hot day.
00:32:47.920Yeah. And even in the 90s, like before stuff went viral on TikTok, like, and I don't know if this was in Portuguese or whatever, it was in Brazil, like this went crazy viral.
00:33:01.060Doug Ivester casually revealed that Coca-Cola was developing and testing a new vending machine concept equipped with internal thermometers and temperature sensors.
00:33:10.100because consumers desire for cold drinks increases in hot weather so it is fair that
00:33:15.620it should be more expensive the machine will simply make this process automatic wow so they
00:33:20.200were thinking about this early on customers were furious widely viewing the idea as predatory
00:33:25.020corporate price gouging and exploitation rival pepsi cola sees the opportunity to publicly
00:33:30.040criticize coke calling the strategy a scheme to exploit vulnerable consumers rather than benefit
00:40:46.920Because usually there's a way, like if somebody wants to do so much greed, there's another way, it seems like, to be hopeful and for a new opportunity to come along.
00:40:59.280I think the way that we get out of this is consumers get frustrated enough that some companies feel like they can cut a different path and actually gain a competitive advantage by being the kind of company that doesn't rip you off, by being the kind of company that uses fixed prices.
00:41:17.220And I know Aldi, for example, is like running commercials basically saying like, we're not going to use electronic shelf labels.
00:43:53.520We're going to, like, go for broke and try to basically bring in more revenue than we usually do at other World Cups.
00:44:00.180It says, by hosting across the United States, FIFA operated in a loose regulatory framework that permitted real-time algorithmic price fluctuations,
00:49:01.260And you'll like walk away without asking for something.1.00
00:49:03.620Or are you somewhere in the middle and like we have to give you some pencil shavings,
00:49:06.840like a coupon for your next purchase or something like that, right?
00:49:10.960And they'll be able to know just on if you've been at the store before, what your behaviors
00:49:15.640have been like in the store, et cetera, stuff like that?
00:49:17.560Yeah, it's a little hard to know, like, everything that companies use now, but purchase history is something that companies track, particularly for in-app shopping, right?
00:49:25.520They know exactly what you buy, which store you go to, you know, what you buy frequently.
00:52:25.400So a lot of times if you look in a freezer door and you see one of those screens on the freezer door and you think it's just like an electronic, you know, advertisement, those often have cameras in them.
00:52:36.780Yeah. So they clock like how long you're standing in front of the freezer door, like how long you're dwelling. They might be able to pick out your like if you're a man or a woman, how tall you are, if you're a kid or if you're older. There are a couple of companies now who sell that product. And a lot of times they're in end caps, too.
00:52:54.060so like that those like displays at the end of an aisle oh yeah if they have a virtual display a
00:52:58.860screen there's a good chance there's a camera inside well sometimes on those end caps and
00:53:03.040that's at the end of an aisle when you're going around to the other aisle um they'll have like
00:53:07.740kind of hot they'll have like collab products on there things you've never seen before they'll have
00:53:12.420like um uh peanut butter spaghetti or something or like uh they'll have like barbecue flavored
00:53:19.180napkins oh yeah that's a good example the screen is right there right so there's a good chance
00:53:23.120there's a camera on the screen. Dang. Yeah. Two way. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah. They'll have like
00:53:28.460brownie flavored, uh, Pepsi. They'll have like weird stuff they shouldn't have. Yeah. We couldn't
00:53:33.800even turn to the next aisle without wanting to see something else you could buy. That's the most
00:53:39.320American thing ever. They'll have like a sour cream and onion batteries or something, or they'll
00:53:43.800have like just stuff that you shouldn't even have to like, like barbecued broomsticks or whatever,
00:53:49.220you know, they'll have things that just like, you know, that they shouldn't even have like
00:53:52.420peppermint flavored paper towels or whatever, or pomegranate slippers or something like that,
00:53:58.300or a lot of interesting stuff on the end caps. Anyway, go on.
00:54:01.420No, no, this is like, this is a big part of retail design, right? Like I used to work in
00:54:05.500the mall growing up and, you know, this guy, Victor Gruen from Minnesota, like it's called
00:54:10.620the Gruen effect. He built malls to keep you shopping, right? Similarly, casinos are built
00:54:16.040to keep you gambling, right? Like they'll use curved walls instead of straight walls,
00:54:20.360because if you have a straight wall, you can, like, see the exit.
00:54:22.940But if you have a curved wall, you're sort of, like, gently sort of pushed to look inside.
00:55:46.580Supermarkets, for example, in the food industry
00:55:48.240also used the experience of the Gruen effect to slow things down, to direct attention when
00:55:53.200placing products or to confuse the business through frequent remodeling. Oh, I see. So he
00:55:58.780had this theory, but then they, so why was he? It sounds like he felt guilty later in life and
00:56:03.940sort of came clean, right? And tried to like apologize for what he had, the havoc that he
00:56:08.960wreaked on the American shopper. Yeah. But yeah, he was one of the architects of this design. I
00:56:14.440I mean, another example is, like, they always put the stuff that kids like on the bottom shelf.
00:56:19.680So, like, when I go to the store with my toddler, it's like, you know, he immediately sees the, like, $75, like, excavator at Target, right?
00:56:27.980Because it's right at his eye level, like, on the bottom shelf or, like, the second highest shelf.
00:56:31.040So they do that so they can hold it up to the parents?
00:56:33.240Yeah, because, like, they want kids' products at kids' eye level so that they can, like, tell mom, like, buy the excavator, right?
00:56:40.680Yeah, but everything about like supermarket design, mall design, retail design is like really carefully thought through, you know, to make sure you leave with as much as possible.
01:01:53.760Your recent public statements repeatedly mischaracterize Walmart's pricing practices and use of technology.
01:01:58.740They leave audiences believing Walmart uses or is preparing to use customers' personal information or changes in the weather to charge them more.
01:02:06.880Your account does not accurately describe our practices or our plans, so we're asking you to correct the record.
01:02:17.680Walmart does not and will not use an individual customer's personal information, income, shopping history, urgency, or willingness to pay to set an individualized price.
01:12:57.320Like, they were the original inventors and exporters of all of the worst practices.
01:13:02.300Like, dynamic pricing started in the airlines.
01:13:05.020Unbundling, the practice of, like, selling you a seat on the plane, but then, like, you have to pay extra for luggage.
01:13:11.800You have to pay extra to, like, actually pick which seat you want on the plane.
01:13:15.240All of that started in the airlines and then has been exported to other industries.
01:13:19.440You know, I think the airlines are looking into surveillance pricing. I mean, it's been hard to pinpoint, but they're certainly partnering with a lot of companies who build surveillance pricing tools. So it stands to reason that that's where they're headed next. But the airlines are really pioneers of a lot of the worst pricing practices.
01:13:39.720So it's interesting to see him go from Air New Zealand to Walmart, which has also built this media business that's, you know, they're not just selling groceries and not just selling clothes and not just selling, you know, detergent.
01:13:52.280They're now also selling your data with their media business.
01:14:09.220I mean, it is a lot, but it all kind of goes in hand with where it feels like we're at in our
01:14:13.660country right now, you know, where it's like, it feels like, um, they're squeezing you for
01:14:19.320everything, you know, and the people that care, just something happened to them, you know? Um,
01:14:26.380but the people, regular people still care, I think are still hopeful. You know, I don't think people
01:14:32.220are losing that, but, uh, that elected officials are that some of these people are going to help
01:14:39.000us or that even that big tech, where's like some of these tech Robin hoods that come along and0.99
01:14:44.600are like, Hey, I'm going to do something different than just be like a greedy piece of shit or0.99
01:14:49.240whatever. You know, like where, where does that come? Like, like, I don't know. You would still1.00
01:14:53.720hope that there's like, I don't know, somebody out there who, or something out there that's
01:14:58.780possible. Um, well, and Hey, I'm sitting here talking to one. So what am I even, I'm looking
01:15:04.480never, I'm like, where are they? And here you are. So thank you, Lindsay, for being here with me
01:15:09.020today. As a consumer, we hear stuff like use a VPN, right? Yeah. Using Cognito mode. Yeah. Are
01:15:15.500some of those things effective? Take me through some of those things. Yeah. So look, I, you know,
01:15:19.320personally, like I come from a policymaking background. I really don't think that every
01:15:24.920consumer should be out there ducking and dodging and bobbing and weaving and trying not to get
01:15:28.820screwed. Okay. I really think it's time for federal lawmakers to step in and make sure our economy is0.95
01:15:33.940honest again. Like that's really what I'm looking for. And that's what I think we deserve. But I
01:15:39.240also used to work in Congress. So I know that's not coming soon. So in the meantime, I think there
01:15:45.280are a few things. The first thing I'll say is turn the experiment back around on these companies.
01:15:50.040Like they figure out how much they can charge you by running experiments on you. Run experiments
01:15:55.720on them. Like if you are leaving a football game with your buddies and you're going to go to a bar
01:15:59.620after, like everyone fire up the Uber app at the same time, there's a decent chance that one of
01:16:04.360you will get a much lower price than the others and take the Uber from whoever gets the lowest
01:16:09.480price. Similarly, like when I'm shopping for airline tickets, like my husband and I sit on the
01:16:14.500couch and we both fire up the app to see if one of us gets a better deal. And almost always
01:16:19.280our prices vary, right? Like we get different prices. We do. So I really think turning the
01:16:25.100experiment back on these guys is just like one small form of protest. The other thing is you
01:16:30.320have to update how you comparison shop. It used to be that you would like go look at detergent
01:16:34.300and Target, and then you would say, hmm, that seems high. Maybe I'll go see what the detergent
01:16:38.420price is at Walmart. Now you have to comparison shop within Walmart. You need to look at what
01:16:44.300the price is in the app. What is the price online? What is the price in the brick and mortar store?
01:16:50.120We have seen examples where prices at Target vary at two targets that are two miles apart, right? So I think a more expansive form of comparison shopping is another good tip, although admittedly, like, it's going to eat up your time, right?
01:17:45.760So basically, Staples was charging customers more when they knew that they lived in a region of the country where there was no Office Depot or no Office Max.
01:18:27.800So like there were $60 differences in the fees for the ticket prices on StubHub.
01:18:32.700And then once the shoppers went into incognito mode, the price differences were like $4.
01:18:37.840So they weren't completely gone, but it was interesting and suggests, you know, it's impossible to know definitively exactly how these algorithms work because companies aren't letting us see that.
01:18:48.160But it does suggest that once you kind of hid your data, you were getting screwed a little less.
01:19:48.940Yeah. So Wendy's rolled out, announced that they were rolling out electronic menu boards throughout the country. And most drive-thrus now are like moving to electronic menu boards. But it means that, you know, Wendy's HQ, McDonald's HQ can have a pricing algorithm that changes pricing retail location by retail location.
01:20:06.800now often they're owned by franchisees and so the franchisees have to like take the
01:20:11.060recommendations and and set the prices but you know mcdonald's is pretty good about being like
01:20:16.440oh like if you want your franchise location renewed you should probably like take our
01:20:20.500pricing recommendations right right but it could happen in the future that you could drive around
01:20:24.380the drive-thru and it could see your license plate or could see your eyes yeah through like
01:20:28.640a retinal scanner and then you pull around and the board's changing as you come around
01:20:32.860And then it's $16 or whatever for a McRiblet or whatever.
01:20:41.380And by the way, if you order an app and then go pick it up in the drive-thru, then they can use all sorts of information about you based on the fact that you've logged into the app.
01:20:50.840There was this Wired reporter who lives in California.
01:20:54.720And in California, you can request your corporate data.
01:20:57.700You can like write to the company and by law, they have to give you all the data they've collected about you.
01:21:18.560and received a 515 page personal dossier.
01:21:22.940Oh my God, that's like getting a Valentine almost.
01:21:26.000It would honestly feel kind of nice, like somebody cares.
01:21:29.000The 515-page report details his loyalty app interactions, purchase history across 61 visits in San Francisco and Santa Barbara, top products like Large Diet Cokes, okay, Reese, and ScanMonopoly sweepstakes codes.
01:22:13.260In a separate project, Wired filed over 100 data access requests to different companies under the CCPA, finding that the process is often burdensome and several companies mistakenly sent data deletion notices instead of actual records.
01:23:27.280Like, why do they need an entire lab filled with scientists who get better at scanning our retinas and measuring our heart rates and, you know, measuring our car suspension all to do what?
01:25:54.920they make like, if they make chips, it's like, um, it says on the ingredients, it's like one
01:26:00.800potato, salt tallow. Right. And like when you open the bag of chips, you can see the middle chip,
01:26:07.580like the biggest, the middle part of the potato, that chip is in there. And it's like, I don't
01:26:12.340know. I think maybe it is a good time for, um, for something new, right. For us, like to create
01:26:19.020more, like, how do I find something that my family can sell to your family and you can sell
01:26:23.380something back to us and then we can support each other because it doesn't feel like some of these
01:26:28.620other places are going to want to do that for us anymore. Yeah. Like it's, it is time I think to
01:26:33.420return to the transparency and the simplicity of the paper price tag and the Amish market and the
01:26:41.200simplicity of that. Yeah. I know. I'm like, dude, is the, is the only way out of this? I got to
01:26:45.980convert to amishism, you know? Yeah. I mean, the Quakers really, um, you know, they really brought
01:26:53.740us the price tag and the fair price. And so I guess, you know, I guess we could go to Pennsylvania,1.00
01:26:57.680Dutch County and, and take a look around. Are there moral companies that you see out there
01:27:02.800like that, that you know of, do you see like a religious based companies that have an actual
01:27:07.860ethical moral compass that seems viable? Like, are there things that you see like that? Like,
01:27:14.320Because you would also think that if, say, if there's certain religions that believe in, like, a moral process, like, why don't they ban, like, certain churches or whatever, ban together their funds and create things that are going to be fair to their consumers?
01:27:29.880You would think that some of these larger religious entities could maybe do something like that.
01:27:35.800Does that make any sense when I even say that, or am I just crazy?
01:27:38.240Yeah, look, I mean, we don't really have a consumer movement in this country.
01:27:41.420And so I do think, you know, consumer movements could be located elsewhere. They could be located in churches. They could be located in labor movements or labor unions, right? There are ways in which we can get together and use our collective power, our collective purchasing power, our collective, you know, solidarity to try to get a better deal or to try to push back against some of these practices.
01:28:03.060And look, like, you know, because we do this work and we're pretty loud about it, we often get emails from companies letting us know that they're building systems to try to help consumers deal with this.
01:28:16.120And one of the companies that we have had conversations with, and I haven't used this product myself, but they're called Cart Happy, and they basically built an in-app extension.
01:28:26.240So if you do your grocery shopping online and you're like buying 30 items at Walmart, like when you're about to check out, it'll say, hey, actually 10 of these items are cheaper right now at Target.
01:28:37.620And you can split your basket in two and buy like 20 of the items at Walmart and 10 of the items at Target or whatever.
01:28:44.660And so I think there are some companies who are trying to cut a different path and, you know, make things a little easier for consumers.
01:28:51.880But I haven't used it myself, so I don't.
01:29:12.440We're at this kind of interesting inflection point where I do think, you know, there is the possibility that AI assistants, like, you know, Meta has Muse now, the like little white fluff ball.
01:29:22.920And look, AI could be a great personal assistant, right?
01:29:27.040Like one of the things that Meta's muse is advertising
01:29:30.300is that they'll go and cancel all your subscriptions,
01:29:33.160like all of the crap that you have recurring charges for
01:29:36.260that you like forget to cancel, right?0.80
01:29:37.980Like various streaming subscriptions, for example.
01:29:41.760And, you know, that could save you a lot of money
01:29:43.580to have, you know, your bot go and handle your subscriptions.
01:29:48.180But also, you're handing over a lot of information to these personal assistants, including often your wallet, right?
01:30:00.640And we've looked at some early research on these AI shopping assistants.
01:30:05.600And the biggest study of AI shopping assistants, they ran 325,000 experiments.
01:30:11.840And what they found is that even when you tell the shopping assistant to go get you the cheapest option, sometimes it would go rogue, look at your emails, decide that you could pay more, and then return, like, the second or third or fourth cheapest option instead of the cheapest option, including for things like health insurance plans that are, like, kind of important.
01:35:41.000And you sent it to go find you the cheapest option. And then it took matters into its own hand, like rooted around your email inbox, saw that you made a expensive purchase yesterday and thought, oh, this sucker can afford a more expensive airplane ticket and then returned a more expensive airplane ticket, even though you asked for the cheapest option.0.54
01:36:02.240And like, right. And like in the rest of the economy, your agent is supposed to work for you, right? Like your real estate agent is supposed to work for you, not the seller if you're the buyer, right? Like your financial advisor is supposed to work for you, not whoever gives him kickbacks to like sell their products, right? And they're calling themselves agents and they're saying they're your assistant, but actually they don't work for you. They work for Muse or they work for the company that pays for the advertising.
01:36:29.020Satan. Yeah. God, Lindsay, I don't even know anymore. I just want to fricking take my legs
01:36:36.240off and send them somewhere. I can't handle all this. Sell them to the highest bidder.0.99
01:36:41.660Yeah. Oh, one of these perverted fricking tech lords would probably buy them,1.00
01:36:49.200you know, for a decent amount. I'm like, you don't care that I can't walk. They're like,0.98
01:36:54.400it's everything dude it's all gonna years from now i i've always thought there would be a smile
01:36:59.480we'll be in a museum you'll have to go see it and people will be like that people used to feel joy
01:37:05.400and their mouth would curl at the ends and the kids would be like what are you talking about dad0.95
01:37:11.240i don't even know what's going on anymore i just want to fucking eat my own eyeballs0.96
01:37:17.300and get a nap in anyway sorry i'm drifting off um dude i saw one thing lindsey this was crazy0.87
01:37:25.480thing that i saw tell me if this is true and then i want to know a little bit more how like
01:37:30.100some industries that were being taken advantage of that we don't even notice in maybe yeah sure
01:37:33.720um that can be helpful to listeners they there was a story that they had sat tests they like
01:37:40.480the princeton review was charging more for sat tutoring or for testing i'm not sure which one
01:37:46.280it was um in asian heavy zip codes is that true that's exactly right oh so princeton review like
01:37:53.040if you logged on from an ip address that was in an area of the country that had more asian americans
01:37:59.780they were charging you more for the same test prep package than other individuals in a less
01:38:05.820like predominantly asian neighborhood and this has been going on for a while this is 2015 asian
01:38:10.560families living in the u.s are are almost twice as likely to be charged higher prices for college
01:38:15.580test prep the Princeton Review according to a new study from ProPublica. The Princeton Review
01:38:23.320determines pricing based on a potential customer's zip code. As ProPublica notes, there is nearly
01:38:28.880a $2,000 difference in the highest and lowest prices for the Princeton Review
01:38:33.440premier SAT prep course. When it comes to getting the highest prices, living in a zip code with a
01:38:38.600high median income or a large Asian population seem to make the greatest difference. According1.00
01:38:43.240in the ProPublica Reporters by Julian Angwin.
01:39:03.300Bro, we need Asian people to get upset about this.1.00
01:39:06.260High income zip codes were twice as likely1.00
01:39:08.020to be charged for a more expensive price.
01:39:09.480because i you know sometimes like part of me is like yeah charge rich people more i don't care
01:39:15.160but it's not fair if you're charging somebody that's asian is because you think they're good0.93
01:39:19.840at something and some asians these days bro some of these second third degree asians or whatever0.99
01:39:24.800they're called they're not some of them are not even that good at stuff like they used to be like1.00
01:39:30.980the premier asians used to have shit popping dude there's asian dudes now that can't even read that1.00
01:39:36.220good. I mean, look, income and willingness to pay are not the same thing. Yeah. Right. Like that's1.00
01:39:41.480the key here. Like you think it's just going to be the rich who get soaked, but actually it's the
01:39:45.780people who want it the most or the people who are the most desperate or the people who need
01:39:50.720something most urgently. Like the problem with surveillance pricing is, you know, when companies
01:39:56.420are collecting this data on you, they get better and better at figuring out how desperate you are.
01:40:01.120I mean, this is why I'm so worried about surveillance pricing and AI assistance, because let's say, you know, there was an example, the Facebook whistleblower had this crazy example where it turned out that Facebook, when you deleted selfies, so let's say you're like a teenage girl, you're insecure about how you look, you know, you delete a lot of selfies because you're like, oh, this is a bad picture of me.
01:40:21.880They were pushing you beauty products.
01:40:24.600Right. And so there's all sorts of ways in which companies are really exploiting insecurity, exploiting desperation. I mean, this is like an Asian immigrant family who just wants their kid to go to college. And so they're willing to pay, you know, an extra $1,500 for six weeks of test prep. Right. And companies figured that out. They're like, oh, these Asian moms are, you know, really hoping their kids get into college. So we're going to bilk them for all they're worth.
01:40:50.220and you know these teenage girls are really insecure so we're gonna see them as like1.00
01:40:56.360shooting fish in a barrel and push them expensive beauty products oh and you're hoping like some
01:41:04.500hero comes along to save you you know and it's not even that guy from that song who sang that
01:41:10.220song when a hero comes along was a woman singing it i don't know it's not even a guy um it's mariah
01:41:19.480a carry, isn't it? No, I was going to go with Celine Dion. It might've been, it doesn't matter,
01:41:23.980dude. Sorry. I'm going off track, but yeah, you're like hoping for a hero and you don't even like,
01:41:28.440oh, um, I want to talk about, um, I've heard you mentioned before a shopper's bill of rights.
01:41:34.560Yeah. What does that look like? Yeah. I think it's time for shoppers in this country,
01:41:39.400consumers, if you want to use the kind of technical term to have some guaranteed rights,
01:41:44.480so that we don't get ripped off in every setting in commerce.
01:41:48.840And, you know, at different points in our country,
01:41:51.160we have changed the laws to address new technologies.
01:42:06.960Because we needed to like fill our kitchens with like new electronics
01:42:09.420and people needed to know that their house wouldn't burn down.
01:42:11.940So the government built something they called the Consumer Product Safety Commission. And what the Consumer Product Safety Commission does is when a product is dangerous or has a defect, they issue a recall. And they just let you know like, hey, you got to bring your car back to the shop because the brakes don't work or you've got to return this crib because like kids are suffocating in it, right? Just like basic safety rights.
01:42:36.940And now I think it is time for more updates to safety in this high tech world of e-commerce and AI enabled commerce. So I think things like a ban on surveillance pricing, like you cannot collect data about me and then turn it against me and weaponize it to overcharge me. Like we're just not going to let that happen.
01:42:58.660I think we are owed the right to a refund.
01:43:03.160When a product doesn't work, we should be able to get a refund without having to battle a chatbot and customer service for three hours.
01:43:10.940And then maybe we'll get a gift card or maybe, you know, we'll get store credit, right?
01:43:15.400Like they can auto-populate your address.
01:43:18.060They can auto-populate your credit card information.
01:43:29.080Like, our organization estimates that the annoyance economy, which is things like fighting chatbots for refunds, is costing Americans $165 billion every single year in lost time and lost money.
01:43:42.760So the Shopper's Bill of Rights is 12 different rights that I think are no-brainers.
01:43:48.020Like, this isn't, like, super high-tech stuff.
01:43:50.140It's just the right to a refund, the right to an all-in price.
01:43:53.200Like, you should know how much something costs without, like, the hidden fees that get tacked on at the end of the transaction, right?
01:44:43.820And we'll be out there exposing corporate malfeasance and price gouging
01:44:48.320all day long, all year long for years to come.
01:44:52.240that's awesome i'm glad to know somebody's doing it you know it's like yeah it's like
01:44:58.800i don't know it feels hard to even find time to do stuff i think for most people
01:45:02.760you know it's just like they've got you so dizzy with so many things sometimes
01:45:08.420it's like gosh i thought we were just supposed to be alive and kind of having a good time doing it
01:45:13.820i don't know what but i guess some people don't think that that's what we're supposed to be doing
01:45:19.340Yeah, I don't think like shopping has gotten really expensive in this country. And there are a lot of reasons, right? Like the war in Iran is pushing up gas prices and energy prices. Tariffs are increasing the price of imports like that makes Halloween candy more expensive this year. It makes Christmas gifts more expensive. You know, we have inflation going on in the economy.
01:45:38.280But there's another culprit here, and I think most Americans realize it's happening but don't fully understand exactly how.
01:45:45.780And that's that corporate America has reinvented the ripoff, and they're deploying increasingly sophisticated technologies to get better at reaching deeper into our wallets.
01:45:55.700And we're really interested in exposing that, which is how we end up in skirmishes with Walmart.
01:46:02.740But we're also interested in figuring out how to fight back.
01:46:05.260And sometimes, honestly, just exposing it is enough, right?
01:46:07.600It worked for Instacart. You know, when we exposed what Delta was doing with Fetcher, you know, they announced that they were going to back off some of the personalized pricing. So we definitely have gotten some results. But we also advocate in Washington and in state houses. New York right now is considering a ban on surveillance pricing. It passed the legislature, but the governor hasn't signed it yet.
01:46:29.680And she has until the end of the year to sign it.
01:46:32.180But I mean, I gotta be honest, like, just do it, right?
01:46:58.320So it would be a huge move forward for consumers.
01:47:02.860And I imagine a lot of states would follow suit.
01:47:05.340And New York could be the leader on that.
01:47:06.860Yeah, there have been some movement with like small ball policies that just ban surveillance pricing and things like grocery stores and Connecticut and New Jersey and Maryland and Seattle.
01:47:17.060But there hasn't yet been like a really robust bill to ban surveillance pricing across the economy.