Oct 14, 2026 · 30 min
Listen from 27:30
Listen at 27:30
Algorithms turn consumer data into pricing power
At The Money: Is Technology Price Gouging Consumers?
The episode examines how concentrated markets and surveillance technologies can make prices less transparent while helping companies charge more.
- 1Companies used pandemic inflation to test higher prices and normalize a more aggressive pricing playbook.
- 2RealPage’s YieldStar software illustrates how algorithmic rent recommendations can coordinate pricing without traditional price-fixing meetings.
- 3Personalized and dynamic pricing experiments weaken the transparency and bargaining power e-commerce once promised consumers.
Don't miss
Owens describes the Instacart investigation, in which secret shoppers found different prices for identical grocery carts across locations.
The brief
Lindsay Owens explains how pricing moved beyond cost-plus formulas into an engineered process shaped by algorithms, surveillance, and market power.
The pandemic gave companies cover to raise prices, while RealPage’s YieldStar software shows how algorithmic recommendations can coordinate rents across landlords.
The conversation turns to personalized pricing: retailers could use location, license-plate data, patents, and shopping behavior to estimate willingness to pay.
An Instacart investigation comparing identical grocery carts across locations becomes the clearest test of dynamic pricing’s consumer risks—and the backlash it triggered.
Owens rejects the idea that surveillance pricing is a corporate Robin Hood, arguing that opaque systems are built to extract more from everyone.
The episode’s broader warning is that e-commerce delivered sophisticated pricing tools, but not the transparency or bargaining power consumers were promised.
What was said on this episode
20 statements · 1 positive · 18 negative · 1 neutral
Corporate pricing has become a highly engineered process.
“Today, pricing is a highly engineered science.”
Listen at 3:49
Companies use physicists and AI acquisitions to extract more money from consumers.
“They hire physicists. They acquire AI companies, all to help them get better at squeezing you and reaching further into your wallet.”
Listen at 3:55
Companies expected to pass through rising costs and raise prices further.
“They felt like they were going to be able to pass along their rising costs and even go for more in some cases.”
Listen at 5:08
Algorithmic software enables landlords to participate in potential price-fixing conspiracies.
“And landlords can join in on what could amount to a price-fixing conspiracy, you know, with the tap of their iPhone.”
Listen at 7:58
Many landlords accepted YieldStar’s recommended rents by default.
“But many landlords opted into the default mode where they basically did take the recommendations.”
Listen at 8:28
RealPage may have increased rental-market costs by up to $120 monthly.
“But by some estimates, RealPage's impacts on rental markets could be as much as like $120 a month.”
Listen at 10:11
Pricing startups advise companies on increases, resisting discounts, and competitor tracking.
“They tell them when to raise their prices. They tell them when to hold firm and not lower their prices. They track competitors' prices.”
Listen at 11:01
Greater industry concentration worsens prices.
“Concentration in our economy, 75% of industries more concentrated now than they were a generation ago, is terrible for prices.”
Listen at 12:03
Reduced competition and greater consolidation encourage harmful pricing technologies.
“as competition shrinks, as consolidation increases, it's really a petri dish for these more sinister and nefarious pricing technologies.”
Listen at 12:21
New pricing technologies weaken competition that normally restrains prices.
“a lot of these new technologies sort of do an end run around some of the competition that keeps prices in check in our economy.”
Listen at 13:16
Walmart applied for technology using imagery to infer purchases from vehicle suspension changes.
“There is a patent that Walmart applied for to... Use imagery to tell if your car suspension has changed from when you enter the store and exit the store.”
Listen at 14:31
Expedia charged higher-income locations more for identical Manhattan hotel rooms.
“there was an example where Expedia was charging people from higher income geographies more for the exact same hotel room in Manhattan than people from lower income geographies.”
Listen at 15:24
Electronic shelf labels can quickly discount products nearing expiration.
“you could quickly discount items that are about to expire.”
Listen at 18:19
Delta partnered with Fetcher to increase flight prices.
“Delta had teamed up with Fetcher to hike prices on flights.”
Listen at 20:07
Delta expanded Fetcher’s pricing scope from 1% to 20% of fares.
“And they initially gave this AI company 1% of their fares to muck around with. And they like what they saw. So by the end of the year, they were going to give it 20% of their fares to muck around with.”
Listen at 20:34
Instacart charged different shoppers different prices for most tested items.
“for almost 75% of the items in the cart, Instacart was charging some shoppers different amounts than other shoppers.”
Listen at 22:25
Instacart’s tested price differences reached 23%.
“And those differences were as high as 23%.”
Listen at 22:33
Surveillance pricing aims to extract as much money as possible from everyone.
“the goal of surveillance pricing is to squeeze everyone as much as they can.”
Listen at 24:22
Companies will become highly effective at capturing consumer surplus.
“I think they will be pretty good at taking what an economist might call all of the consumer surplus.”
Listen at 24:59
Pricing technologies make e-commerce more opaque, manipulative, and coercive.
“what these technologies are doing is creating more opacity there. more manipulative, they're more coercive in some cases.”
Listen at 26:03
Statements are attributed to the speaker as said on the episode and reflect their view at the time, not PodLume's. They are not advice.
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