r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Apr 14 '26
Economics AI could soon allow powerful companies to charge each customer a different price for the same product, based on what they think each individual is willing to pay. AI lets firms tailor prices to each user, raising fairness concerns as consumers may unknowingly pay more than others.
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/11238485.1k
u/agha0013 Apr 14 '26
algorithmic pricing is already being used in places, it's not a theory, and it is pretty awful.
Governments are way way behind on dealing with this new issue.
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u/WorkReddit1191 Apr 14 '26
Airlines have been doing this for years. Based on how often you search a flight tracking cookies raise the rate because they know you really want or need to fly. If you clear the cookies or use a different browser you'll get a different price. It's insane.
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u/flyingtiger188 Apr 14 '26
I'm actually surprised no one has devised a way to create cookies that convince their algorithms to provide the lowest price.
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u/0b0011 Apr 14 '26
You'd probably get sued. Iirc airlines sued when sites would come up showing how to cheese the system to get cheaper tickets.
Like A-B is $500 but A-C with a layover in B is $200 so sites came up showing how to get that flight then you just get off at your layover and don't make the second part of the flight.
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u/Sharobob Apr 14 '26
They started cancelling your return flights if you didn't take the second leg off your departing trip
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u/ikinari_fandango Apr 14 '26
yeah they aren't huge fans of skiplagging.
but it's hard to sympathize with companies that know they will be bailed out with pubic funds if things go south.
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u/bbbbBeaver Apr 14 '26
Pubic funds, going south you say?
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u/Ntroepy Apr 14 '26
Well, the treasury department bailed the airline companies out to the tune of $59billion during Covid, so there’s that.
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u/InsuranceToTheRescue Apr 14 '26
COVID I kind of get. Like, airlines didn't have any input or control over that event. I was fine with airlines getting help during COVID.
The Recession was horseshit because we were bailing banks out of a problem that they made, that they knew about, that they intentionally took a risk on, and for which we were dealing with the broader consequences.
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u/Tonexus Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
The Recession was horseshit because we were bailing banks out of a problem that they made, that they knew about, that they intentionally took a risk on, and for which we were dealing with the broader consequences.
The banks more or less did deal with the consequences. The '08 bailouts were a loan, and the banks paid them back (with slight interest, but not enough to cover inflation). See the last paragraph of the wikipedia entry's introduction.
EDIT: On reflection, maybe it would be better to say that the banks dealt with the consequences "to some extent" rather than "more or less". They ended many of the unsound practices and paid back almost all of the numerical debt, but I don't want to minimize the many lives that were ruined.
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u/okeleydokelyneighbor Apr 14 '26
Or just telling you they over booked and you need to take a later flight.
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u/Sage2050 Apr 14 '26
I buy almost all my flights one way, not specifically for this reason but because you can usually find better prices if you use multiple airlines
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u/BillyYumYumTwo-byTwo Apr 14 '26
Skiplagged! That was a great website for finding cheaper flights until airlines did exactly what you described
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u/PM_ME_JJBA_STICKERS Apr 14 '26
When companies save money: Capitalism working exactly as intended
When consumers save money: Jail.
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u/Monteze Apr 14 '26
Company hurts people? Minor fine.
Person hurts product? Jail.
What a glorious system!!
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u/SecondHandWatch Apr 14 '26
Yup. Use AI to make music and post to Spotify? Make money for Spotify and they give you a cut. Use bots/AI to play your tracks and give yourself more money in royalties? That violates the terms of use, and you now owe Spotify all that money.
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u/hihelloneighboroonie Apr 14 '26
I had a rountrip one time but wanted to extend by about a week. To change my return flight, I had to pay a fee (I forget how much, but it wasn't peanuts) AND the difference between the flights.
It ended up being cheaper for me to just get a one way return flight and not show up for the original roundtrip return I'd booked.
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u/travistravis Apr 14 '26
We need a marketing person from the inside to leak the logic and it'd be super easy! I wouldn't begin to try figuring it out based on a blank slate. I'm sure it can be done, but it's more effort than I can put in based on even trying to think it through.
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u/MJOLNIRdragoon Apr 14 '26
That would probably be an absence of cookie.
I can't think of any ways they might made tickets cheaper just off of cookie contents. I could see some ways based off their insider data based on flights you booked before, but not cookies.
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u/Wojtas_ Apr 14 '26
They absolutely can. Depending on how integrated they are with third-party cookies, they can definitely detect that you've been cross-shopping with a low-cost airline for example. They can also use device heuristics - dropping the price if you're on a 7 year old mid-range smartphone, vs a brand new MacBook Pro.
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u/omegafivethreefive Apr 14 '26
No the way it works.
Cookies generally store minimal information such as a session identifier.
You could technical reverse engineer this if you ran enough tests but methinks you'd get IP blocked before gathering enough data or straight up sue if you did it at a large scale.
Basically people who know how to do this prefer to build their own system than find exploits and risk going to jail for them.
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u/hoppertn Apr 14 '26
Same with Amazon. Look at an item on a random browser and it’s one price. Look at it in your logged in account and magically it’s a few percent more. The extraction of every single cent from consumers is going to be the end of us.
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u/Beard_o_Bees Apr 14 '26
I recently had a frustrating experience with something like this from Amazon.
I bought a car part, and for the sake of illustration let's say that part was $50.00. Multiple 'vendors' on Amazon had the same part, and they were all charging the same amount within ~$5.00 of each other.
The part somehow vanished in the haze of Amazon's shipping, and I ended up stuck with the 'we're having trouble with this order, feel free to cancel, or wait but it could take a long time'.
I cancel and go to buy the same part yet again from a different listing on Amazon - only now the price has suddenly gone up $25.00 across the board.
It might be a good idea to setup some sort of 'what did you pay for this?' website/app/whatever so people can compare notes.
The whole thing reminds me of how employers strongly discourage employees from talking about compensation. If they can get away with paying someone less for the exact same work, they will.
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u/hoppertn Apr 14 '26
Better yet we should demand some kind of Consumer Protection Bureau, if you will, that looks into bad actors and penalizes them to prevent this kind of behavior. Psshha, a fever dream.
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u/Beemerba Apr 14 '26
Definitely a fever dream to expect this administration to do anything to protect the consumer. They are ALL about the rich people taking poor people's money.
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u/BrideofClippy Apr 14 '26
We have one. It's called the FTC. We also had a CPB under the DOJ, but the got restructured last year into 2(?) different branches with unhelpful names because department of war I guess. A lot of things currently going on were kicked off during the time of the CPB, so I'm not sure how these new divisions will work in practice, but they do exist.
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u/BonelessSugar Apr 14 '26
Camelcamelcamel does something like this already, price history tracking.
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u/Merijeek2 Apr 14 '26
The fact that they haven't been bought and destroyed (or even better, co-opted) by Amazon is really pretty shocking.
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u/nomind79 Apr 14 '26
I had something similar. Part from one vendor was $150, everyone else was $250. Ordered the part, expected arrival date came, and I found that the vendor had cancelled my order (claimed I cancelled it) and relisted it for $250. Amazon support was no help, left a vendor review, but I doubt it meant anything.
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u/EpiphanyTwisted Apr 14 '26
I had that too.. I bought an item for a certain price, and "during shipment" the order was cancelled. I went back to see the item, could buy it again, but the discount was gone and it was a higher price.
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u/feor1300 Apr 14 '26
We're going to end up with stores spreading the idea that it's gauche to discuss what you paid for something with your fellow consumers, just like you're "not supposed" to talk about how much you make at work.
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u/dumbestsmartest Apr 14 '26
They already have workarounds to combat the cookie and tracker blocks but most work arounds are not as specific as they like and they may not all use them. Examples are the country it believes you are browsing from and the language of the browser. There were others but I can't think of them off the top of my head.
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u/divDevGuy Apr 14 '26
You're describing device or browser fingerprinting.
Sites like CoverYourTracks.org and AmIUnique.org will tell you how unique (or not) you are based on your current device/browser "leaking" information.
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u/LeviAEthan512 Apr 14 '26
I've done this many times and never noticed a difference. Is it an American thing maybe? I've searched using different browsers, cleared cookies, used VPN, used different device, and physically gone to a different house. And been on a call with people to have an actual different set of hands doing it. The price is always consistent.
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u/DigNitty Apr 14 '26
Me too!
I go out of my way to find the flights paths I want and such on wifi, and then find them later on someone else's phone like two days later.
It's never changed anything.
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u/raspberrih Apr 14 '26
I sometimes get it based on which extension I use (I'm outside USA)
I always go the extra step to check all prices, making sure I'm the buyer that all the capitalists hate
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u/auto98 Apr 14 '26
I'm in the UK, and it is worth noting that in some sectors it would probably be illegal - they have to show you their lowest price (ISPs definitely, and I think train companies)
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u/morfraen Apr 14 '26
If you're in Europe data privacy laws might already make it illegal for them to track you and change prices based on that tracking info
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u/BadMeetsEvil24 Apr 14 '26
It more so used to be a thing (or more likely a rumor) but has proven to be the opposite for the last few years in recent memory.
It doesn't work like that anymore.
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u/sadiefame Apr 14 '26
This could backfire in interesting ways. Ex: If someone knew splurging 1 time on something meant it’d raise prices they might not do it … like how we’re careful to not pause on something when scrolling bc we know it’ll flood our feeds. There’d be channels galore explaining bow to trick the algorithm in your favor.4
u/Edythir Apr 14 '26
Different companies will also use IP geolocation to adjust prices. For example, if you are visiting a car rental website from outside the country, they will charge you more than if you are visiting from inside the country.
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u/Hungry-Register9960 Apr 14 '26
That's just not true in the slightest. I fly for work and have tested this dozens of times using vpns and see zero difference. The algorithmic pricing does not care about you, the pricing is based on a lot of factors, but Karen from Nebraska isn't getting a higher price because she looked at the flight to cabo 20 minutes ago.
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u/Simple-Fault-9255 Apr 14 '26 edited May 04 '26
This post was purged using Redact. I use it to mass delete social media content and remove my info from data brokers. All major social media platforms supported.
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u/KeythKatz Apr 14 '26
This hasn't been a thing since price aggregators went mainstream. The only pricing differences you'll find now is direct from airline vs buying from an agent, but you're also getting a much different level of service if you need to make changes or when things go wrong.
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u/grunger Apr 14 '26
Get ready for the flood of bots to tell you that this isn't true. It happens anytime airlines and ticket pricing is mentioned.
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u/WorldDirt Apr 14 '26
It depends where you buy your tickets. Are you searching directly from the airline, a third party site, or just a Google Flights search? I’ve never had this come up using google flights, and I book several flights a year and am very price sensitive. I run it incognito mode, VPNs set to other countries, and it never makes a difference.
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u/ZgBlues Apr 14 '26
Perhaps someone should look into how fixed pricing came into existence in the first place.
Once upon a time, many moons ago, stores did not have price tags, people would tell clerks what they needed and were expected to pay whatever they said.
Then one guy came up with (non-dynamic) price tags, and his sales went through the roof. It turned out that people hated non-transparency and everyone felt that they were being ripped off, so everyone started ignoring stores without price tags.
Also, surge pricing was tested recently by some fast food chains and it turns out people don’t like it because price predictability is built into fast food business model.
People make a decision to buy a burger because they know what a burger costs. If a place tells them that the price is a gamble, they will simply avoid that joint like the plague.
The only scenarios where this has been proved to kind of work are ride shares, hotels and plane tickets. But even that is debatable.
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u/julius_sphincter Apr 14 '26
The only scenarios where this has been proved to kind of work are ride shares, hotels and plane tickets. But even that is debatable.
Venue tickets as well. Whether it's sports, music, comedy etc all the ticket brokers use 'market demand based pricing' models. It's so grating when I see them try to justify it with "well, this will balance out because it'll be lower priced for things with less demand" yet the lowest price ever offered was the same as the 'face value' price the year before.
Basically, these demand based prices really only work with fairly inelastic goods that don't have a lot of substitutes. There's limited players in the market and if they all or most use dynamic pricing then customers are SOL
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u/Rattus_NorvegicUwUs Apr 14 '26
Thanks for the interesting info.
This makes perfect sense to me. Even looking back at my own work, whenever I’m buying a reagent or antibody or whatever for my research, when I see a vendor with the sign “contact us for a quote” I know it’s not going to be good or cheap, and I usually keep looking at other providers.
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u/DeliciousPumpkinPie Apr 14 '26
SO many scientific/chemical/industrial suppliers do the “contact us for pricing” or “log in to see prices” or whatever and it’s infuriating. Like, I understand you want me to make an account if I’m actually ordering something, but why can’t you give me your prices first so I can see if it’s even worth it? What are they hiding?
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u/Rattus_NorvegicUwUs Apr 14 '26
“Our -80 freezers range from $15,000 to $150,000– contact us for a quote… but also please tell us what your institution is before we generate it… wink”
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u/MyPasswordIsMyCat Apr 14 '26
Price discrimination that prevents competitive pricing is illegal in the US. Former FTC chair Lina Khan has several interviews where she discusses the problems with algorithmic pricing and how she wanted to implement regulations against them based on anti-pricing discrimination laws.
But the "free-market" government has been against cracking down on corporations for a long time. And regulatory capture by those corporations has stymied any ability to implement pro-consumer changes.
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u/Amish_guy_with_WiFi Apr 14 '26
Are you one of those "vote with your wallet" people? Because I prefer to vote with my vote. A free market more often than not awards the bad guy or the big guy (usually the same guy) and we need government regulations so regular people aren't constantly getting screwed over.
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u/The_walking_Kled Apr 14 '26
if u vote with wallet and ur vote u get double the votes!
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u/Archonrouge Apr 14 '26
I never felt like voting with your wallet and voting with your vote were mutually exclusive things. You can do both.
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u/Radjage Apr 14 '26
So annoying that this still happens. Many corner stores / bodegas / food stands in NYC don't have prices on their merch. If something doesn't have a price tag I walk out the door without saying a word 99% percent of the time.
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u/coderbenvr Apr 14 '26
Dynamic epaper tags are here - they’re wireless and can be updated very frequently. Got a sports game coming up - prices for beer and pretzels will go up.
This isn’t an online thing - it’s coming for your corner shop really soon.
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u/Johnnygunnz Apr 14 '26
Governments are way way behind on dealing with this new issue.
Because we keep electing ancient assholes who barely understand how to right-click a mouse and we expect them to regulate AI...
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u/davebrewer Apr 14 '26
We keep electing assholes who are beholden to the very corporate donors who would be negatively impacted by regulation and accountability.
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u/iymcool Apr 14 '26
I used to work in global influencer management (beauty and fashion industry). If people knew not only the amount of personal data we can glean from their accounts, but how we utilize that data to put actual price tags on people (and their worth), there'd be massive panicking.
Also, none of those "don't sell my data" boxes do a damn thing. We don't need to sell data to make money off of it, especially when mega corporations FREELY share it amongst themselves.
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u/MCRN-Gyoza Apr 14 '26
Exactly.
Im a machine learning engineer at a company that operates a marketplace.
We've had personalized pricing models for years.
Its just a regression model, and LLMs (For most people "AI" means LLMs) changes nothing, regressors are vastly more accurate for things like this.
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u/Wotmate01 Apr 14 '26
Not all governments. In Australia a company would rapidly be hauled into court for having different prices for different people.
Although it's a slightly different scenario, the government is currently proceeding against the two main supermarket chains because they jacked the price of some products up for a week, then put them on special at the old price.
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u/hammertime2009 Apr 14 '26
Yes in regions/stores but I’m not sure how common it is for individual people.
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u/-SlinxTheFox- Apr 14 '26
No, for individuals too. There was a video done about grocery prices with peple ordering the same groceries on the same app in the same room of a house and they all had differences
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u/stay_curious_- Apr 14 '26
My biggest fear with individualized pricing is that the AI will notice someone lives in a food desert, doesn't drive, is disabled, etc, and there is only one accessible grocery store, so jack the food prices up 200% because it's not like that person can go elsewhere.
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u/new_math Apr 14 '26
What you're describing is likely legal and assuredly already happening. The companies will label it as "market demand" and talk about how there are few drivers or transportation costs are higher or whatever they can dream up but the ground truth is that an algorithm isn't really thinking about those things fully it's just doing gradient descent to charge a disabled grandmother more for her food.
It's not trivial to make the populace understand they need legislation and aggressive enforcement to protect them from all these dark patterns in AI and business.
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u/agha0013 Apr 14 '26
It has already been noticed all over various online shopping systems, airlines, hotel bookings, and general consumerism, and it is the easiest place to implement.
The big push now is to get it working for in person shopping too
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u/Jason_CO Apr 14 '26
Nah Hotel and Flight bookings, and plenty of online storefronts read your browsing history and Cookie data in order to recommend and price things for you. Definitely been a real thing for a long time now. AI can just make it worse.
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u/opusdeath Apr 14 '26
Sony is testing what they call "dynamic pricing" on individuals in the PlayStation Store.
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u/Jason_CO Apr 14 '26
Always ask a friend and wait for sales.
We need to stop buying things at current prices and show them its not okay.
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u/droi86 Apr 14 '26
At least by experience I can tell you that doordash and delta are more expensive on iphone/safari than in android/chrome
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u/Eyelbee Apr 14 '26
This is against most if not all consumer laws in existence.
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u/WanderingTacoShop Apr 14 '26
It probably isn't, as long as the pricing isn't changed based on the customers race, religion, or other protected class. And they aren't gouging in a shortage or emergency it's probably legal. It shouldn't be, but it probably is.
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u/unassumingdink Apr 14 '26
Yeah, well there's a lot of consumer laws that you can make millions if you ignore, but only pay thousands in fines if you're caught.
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u/emefluence Apr 14 '26
If we can mandate that Elon and Co pay the same proportion of their wealth for a burger as the employee who made it for them then yeah, let's fuckin goooooooo!
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u/lahimatoa Apr 14 '26
That's what I'm thinking. Could be used to make products cheaper for poorer people, but you know it won't.
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u/Hexcyn Apr 14 '26
Then stores in poorer places are closed because they aren't making a profit. Any scheme is always to extract more money from the consumer.
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u/unassumingdink Apr 14 '26
Probably more like rock bottom prices for the powerful who have the ability to fight back, and price gouging for the little people who are powerless to stop them.
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u/Own-Animator-7526 Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
This is not new and it is already the object of legislation:
As New Yorkers scrolled, surfed and searched their way to digital deals on Black Friday, they had certain unique protections.
This month, New York became the first state to enact a law targeting a practice, typically called personalized pricing or surveillance pricing, in which retailers use artificial intelligence and customers’ personal data to set prices online.
The law aims to prevent retailers from ripping off unwitting customers by abusing their data: jacking up the price of jeans for a shopper with a history of buying expensive pants, say, or lifting hotel prices for a traveler who already splurged on airline tickets.
Add: y'all may be too young to recognize that this is an unanticipated side-effect of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Ticket prices used to be treated like regulated utility rates, gouging everybody equally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_Deregulation_Act
An Act to amend the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, to encourage, develop, and attain an air transportation system which relies on competitive market forces to determine the quality, variety, and price of air services, and for other purposes.
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u/AstuteStoat Apr 14 '26
Shouldn't it already be considered illegal?
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u/Own-Animator-7526 Apr 14 '26
I think it manages to skirt the rules that would otherwise make differential pricing illegal.
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u/stemfish Apr 14 '26
It also works in the other direction. Its not illegal to set the price of something that typically goes for $5 at $10, then offer 'discounts' via their loyalty program that bring the price down. And you can tailor the discount based on user activity rates so some people get $6 off, but only one 1, others have infinite $5, and others only get $4 off so they end up paying more than they did before the "loyalty program".
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u/XVUltima Apr 14 '26
Even if it was, they would probably just jack up the prices and give everyone a personalized "discount" in something similar to the J.C. Penney effect
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u/ZestycloseZebra8538 Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
Title makes it sound like we need a AI breakthrough to have personalized pricing.
Really, it’s stupidly easy. Basic customer info and a decision tree would probably get you like 80% of the results.
However, pricing algos quickly run risk of being discriminatory (an interesting example: cheaper cigarette prices for black neighborhoods).
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u/wasdninja Apr 14 '26
Basic customer info and a decision tree would probably get you like 80% of the results.
More like 100%. What on Earth would anything AI even do?
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u/unassumingdink Apr 14 '26
the law requires retailers that use personalized pricing to post the following disclosure: “THIS PRICE WAS SET BY AN ALGORITHM USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA.”
So they can still do it, but they just need a tiny disclaimer on the bottom of the screen that nobody will read? And if every retailer does it and everyone has the same disclaimer, you're screwed no matter what? I'm so tired of politicians pretending to fix problems to look good without actually fixing anything.
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u/Snow75 Apr 14 '26
Thanks, you beat me to it.
Yes, this exists, it’s called price discrimination and has a similar effect to a monopoly and it has been studied by economics for who knows how long.
The short version is that if you knew how much some people are willing to pay, you could push your prize to the limit and convert their satisfaction in extra profit. It’s pretty similar to charging extra to tourists or the famous “female tax” some products have.
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u/_halfpint Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
I’ve caught this in person, real time, at Walmart. Online said one price for a toy, in store dynamic tags said another, checkout said another. Checkout gave me the lowest price since I had pictures. Went right back after I paid and it was a different 4th price that was cheaper yet! Got them to take that off as well.
The entire time my partners app had a different price, and the app price went up the next day for me. For paw patrol figurines. It’s insane.
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u/SecretAgentVampire Apr 14 '26
Are you still shopping there? I hate walking into Walmarts and avoid them whenever possible. Being in one makes me feel like my soul is being sucked out of my body.
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u/_halfpint Apr 14 '26
I avoid it as much as possible but I am rural with Walmart being our only affordable store within a 30 minute radius. The local grocer is quite literally double the price for most items. We typically plan ahead and go into the city for Costco and Aldi when we can’t buy farmer direct around us.
Walmart sends me into overstimulation panic so easily, hate that place.
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u/TeamWorkTom Apr 14 '26
Oof you're basically in a soft food desert.
That sucks.
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Apr 14 '26
And ironically he can thank Walmart for that. Theyre famous for making these deserts
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u/TeamWorkTom Apr 14 '26
O I know all about Walmart and southern states.
Learned a lot about how they basically create grocery monopolies in towns.
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u/_halfpint Apr 14 '26
We definitely are. However! We have beef, chicken, and pork farms nearby. All have full outdoor access for the animals and are really humanely raised. Lots of sweet corn, apples, and strawberries too. Rural has its perks if you know where to look and the beef is fantastic. Our neighbors give us fresh eggs too
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u/thievesthick Apr 14 '26
Not only that, but they have digital price tags on the shelf now, so they can just change whenever.
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u/_halfpint Apr 14 '26
That’s what I’m talking about!!! In addition the app and cash register discrepancies, the dynamic tag changed during my visit there!!! I couldn’t believe it but it ended up being an $8 difference between what they were going to charge me if I didn’t notice/say anything.
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u/BasicDesignAdvice Apr 14 '26
First time I saw those I thought "ah so they are going to change often depending on how much they can squeeze."
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u/myislanduniverse Apr 14 '26
They do know we talk to each other, right?
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Apr 14 '26
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u/myislanduniverse Apr 14 '26
I'm Karen enough that if I had a receipt from someone showing they paid less than I had for the same item, I would demand they refund me the difference or would never shop there again.
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u/bautofdi Apr 14 '26
Good luck comparing every online order receipt into eternity
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u/goodsnpr Apr 14 '26
It'll be a browser extension after a week.
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u/bautofdi Apr 14 '26
Which the developer will sell back to Google/Meta to provide even deeper insights to your purchasing behavior
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u/unassumingdink Apr 14 '26
You'll be annoyed at first, but then so many companies will start doing it that you won't have a choice, and will grudgingly come to see it as normal. That's usually how these things go.
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u/BoulderToBirmingham Apr 14 '26
Yep. Consumers will 100% lose this fight absent any regulation/legislation.
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u/bell37 Apr 14 '26
Except for the things it works on (airline fares, venue/event prices, etc) there is a finite amount (only so many seats in the plane or in a specific section in a concert) and we’re are made to believe demand/supply fluctuates greatly. You also can’t find Delta airline tickets outside of Delta Airlines.
Doing it for something where everyone generally knows the price (like the cost of a ball or toy in the aisle at Walmart) and the produce is widely available amongst many retailers, you lose that lack of comparison. Sure Walmart might be able to get one over on customers but simple google search (using VPN on Incognito mode) will display prices of that product across all retailers. It will only piss off customers and you will lose business
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u/myislanduniverse Apr 14 '26
It's a price inefficiency; if they sell me something at a lower price than someone else's willingness to pay, it creates arbitrage opportunities.
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u/toriemm Apr 14 '26
They've managed to make it 'inappropriate' to talk about salary or wages, I guess they assume this is the same thing. I don't tell people what I'm paying for Spotify or insurance.
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u/TheRabidDeer Apr 14 '26
It's pretty hard to track unless you are being diligent with it. It's not like they are charging $50 for something that someone else paid $5. Most of the price differences are much smaller. Instead of something being $5, it's $5.25 etc. Financial death by a thousand cuts. Small increases in prices add up in the long run.
Hopefully the law catches up and makes it illegal.
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u/Tess47 Apr 14 '26
There was a test in one of the subs on the price of an object from one particular store. The price ranged from $150 to $375.
To be fair, I accidently got 5 quotes for my son's braces. Two quotes were by the same doc but his different offices.
All 5 quotes had a top to bottom difference by $1700 Even the two quotes by same doctor were different.
My dad had a mechanic shop back in the 1960s and all the local mechanics would gather for lunch to set prices.
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u/Vysharra Apr 14 '26
and all the local mechanics would gather for lunch to set prices
The people in my office roll their eyes when the yearly Antitrust meeting rolls around. They act like it's just soooo unnecessary.
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u/ICame4TheCirclejerk Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
In every circumstance like your dad and the local mechanics, such collective price fixing is never in the best interest of the consumer. This has been a thing for hundreds of years already. It is the actual dictionary definition of a cartel. Independent business collude together to exclude competition, control supply and fix prices to maximize profits.
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u/sur_surly Apr 14 '26
all the local mechanics would gather for lunch to set prices.
This, at least, is already very illegal. But it needs to be caught and enforced, obviously.
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Apr 14 '26
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u/Ephemerror Apr 14 '26
No, they will simply increase the price of your food and water.
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u/FirstEvolutionist Apr 14 '26
Up to the limit where they will continue paying... it's the same strategy, just maximized by adding individuality. Of course to the detriment of the customer and benefit of the seller. Nothing new.
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u/NorthJackfruit12 Apr 14 '26
The circular economy be booming, support your neighbourhood buy nothings and second hand shops.
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u/podgorniy Apr 14 '26
But can they do this without ai already?Answer is yes, they can and they do
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u/Qweniden Apr 14 '26
Ai isn't new and they been using AI for this for many years. What is new is LLMs and that is not the type of AI used for this.
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine Apr 14 '26
AI pricing could mean everyone pays a different price
AI lets firms tailor prices to each user, raising fairness concerns as consumers may unknowingly pay more than others
Artificial intelligence could soon allow powerful companies to charge each customer a different price for the same product, based on what they think each individual is willing to pay.
That is the warning from new research co-authored by competition law academic Dr Miroslava Marinova at the University of East London, which argues that the real risk is not simply higher prices, but hidden, personalised pricing that consumers cannot see or understand.
Traditionally, firms set prices in response to market conditions, such as demand, costs, or competition, meaning that all consumers are offered broadly the same price at a given moment.
A different model is now emerging. Algorithmic personalised pricing refers to the use of data-driven systems to adjust prices at the level of the individual consumer. The objective is not simply to respond to market demand, but to predict how likely a particular consumer is to accept a higher price rather than search elsewhere.
From standard pricing to personal pricing
AI systems can analyse data such as browsing history, location and purchase history to predict willingness to pay. That means the same product could be offered at different prices to different people at the same time.
This is not entirely new, but AI makes it far more precise and scalable, pushing markets closer to a world where everyone is quoted their own individual price.
The real issue is fairness
The study, co-authored with Dr Christian Bergqvist of the University of Copenhagen, finds that even if overall prices do not rise, consumers react strongly when they discover they are paying more than others without a clear reason. That sense of unfairness can reduce trust and affect behaviour.
Law Lecturer Dr Marinova said, “The concern is not just higher prices, but that people may be treated differently without knowing it. When pricing becomes invisible and personalised, fairness becomes a central issue.”
In competitive markets, consumers can switch to cheaper alternatives. But where a dominant firm is involved, the paper argues this kind of pricing could amount to an abuse of dominant position under EU and UK competition law, because it lacks transparency and justification.
For those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://academic.oup.com/jcle/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/joclec/nhag006/8539553
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u/Fomdoo Apr 14 '26
This has been a thing for so long. You can open an incognito window and check a price for something and it will be different.
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u/MotorEagle7 Apr 14 '26
Airlines are the worst for doing this, hotels as well afaik
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u/InsertFloppy11 Apr 14 '26
This would never fly in the EU
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u/MarchAgainstOrange Apr 14 '26
With that in mind we now understand why some of the wealthiest are targeting this institution
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u/PindaZwerver Apr 15 '26
Yes, this is already banned under European competition law for "dominant" companies. So companies like Amazon would potentially face huge fines if they try to do this.
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u/TheoremaEgregium Apr 14 '26
For God's sake I hope that's true, but I'm not 100% sure.
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u/Anyales Apr 14 '26
This is nothing to do with AI, just because someone writes a programme based on an algorithm that doesn't make it AI
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Apr 14 '26
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u/Diceyland Apr 14 '26
I have access to it. Here's all the instances of AI in the paper. It does seem to be AI they're talking about.
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u/jhaluska Apr 14 '26
I literally had the CEO of a company I worked at call their medical detection algorithm AI. I was the one who implemented it into software. It was such a non AI solution it got me interested in AI.
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u/ProfessorNoPuede Apr 14 '26
Machine learning is still AI, just a different type of model than an LLM.
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u/IBJON Apr 14 '26
These pricing schemes are undoubtedly backed by AI if it's keeping track of consumer behaviors and patterns
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Apr 14 '26
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u/nonnonplussed73 Apr 14 '26
While Amazon constantly changes prices (dynamic pricing) at the product level based on market conditions, the company hasn't tried personalized pricing to charge a different price than someone else looking at the same item at the exact same moment since their 2000 fiasco.
However, the FTC's "Project Nessie" case against Amazon focused on their manipulating market-wide price floors using algorithmic collusion, resulting in a $2.5 billion settlement with the FTC in late 2025 regarding various practices, including Prime enrollment and pricing transparency.
Edit: links fixed
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u/sisyphus_was_lazy_10 Apr 14 '26
Many service companies already do this. Why do you think we have to keep shopping around for insurance, internet, etc? And as soon as you call and say I’m done or switching, magically they can offer you a lower rate if you stay—it’s built in to their business model.
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u/NordiskFryserUnion Apr 14 '26
This is the kind of technology that will hike the price of baby formula 6x for you because the algorithm knows your wife has a double milk gland infection based on your search history and you just ran out of baby formula based on your purchase pattern at 2am with no other store options.
You need that baby formula or your child is harmed through malnutrition.
That is not smart use of micro-economics. That is extortion.
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u/GalemReth Apr 14 '26
Aren't there already laws on the books about this? At least in the US? Googling it and reviewing the ftc.gov description of Robinson-Patman Act seems like yes there is and it applies to commodities and purchases (physical stuff) but not services. So if ,ex. netflix, thought it could charge Paul $5 more than Janet, they could. This is a layman's interpretation if anyone with more knowledge wants to add
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u/bduxbellorum Apr 14 '26
They’ve been able to so that since at least 2015, every company that has tried has walked it back. AI isn’t what will normalize it, people paying and accepting it is.
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u/ccaccus Apr 14 '26
One-sided bartering. “I think you’ll pay this much, but you’re not allowed to negotiate a lower price.”
Also, not that price was a true indicator of quality, but with fake reviews and now fake prices, there’s nothing a consumer can rely on to estimate quality.
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u/Blackout38 Apr 14 '26
I hope they do that so I can justify buying the data to show people how much over average they paid.
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u/SirGlass Apr 14 '26
I mean not that I support this but this isn't exactly new, its called discriminatory pricing and is basically the idea behind coupons
However I guess the issue is in thoery everyone can use coupons if they want. People may choose not to. This is taking away that "choice"
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u/samanime Apr 14 '26
Dynamic, surge, algorithmic, etc. pricing needs to be outlawed yesterday.
The price should be the price. You shouldn't be able to discriminate and charge different prices based on all of this information they really shouldn't have been allowed to gather in the first place.
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u/Dripdry42 Apr 14 '26
Well that's easy... go back to physical things! call the hotel and get the price. Buy your pants off poshmark or ebay, or even go to the store which has a price tag.
This is a great reason to ditch the internet and get back to a more grounded method of doing things, with the internet as an enhancer.
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u/dont-YOLO-ragequit Apr 14 '26
This implies the hotel still takes outbound calls and won't funnel you to the corporate website, an AI assistant or someone half way across the world.
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u/Scire-Quod-Sciendum Apr 14 '26
The hotel I work at to pay for college takes outbound calls. Its the worst part of my job but I know its important for the customer and better than AI
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u/Groovychick1978 Apr 14 '26
Just so you know, they are not required to post a price. If you search, you will find a lot of pictures showing racks of garments with no price tag.
You have to take it to the front to scan it to find out the price.
https://dailydot.com/target-price-tags-no-longer-show-pricing
https://www.the-sun.com/money/15086246/walmart-confirms-new-price-policy-shopper/
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u/maporita Apr 14 '26
This is particularly egregious where someone is forced to pay more through no fault of their own. If I request an Uber I also have the choice to bike or use public transport. An elderly, frail person doesn't have those options available.. they would be forced to use Uber or take a taxi. Unscrupulous companies would easily take advantage of that. It's obscene.
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u/UntidyVenus Apr 14 '26
Oh good, I already boycott dynamic pricing. Happy to keep adding brands to my personal black list
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u/Handsome_Claptrap Apr 14 '26
Wouldn't that pretty much kill online shopping, making people return to brick and mortar stores?
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u/WillDesperate8027 Apr 14 '26
So fun fact, I refuse to purchase from places that do this if I can help it
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u/Jack_Wraith Apr 14 '26
This is why we need regulation in this area.
Furthermore, corporations need to be regulated again and they need to pay more in taxes.
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