“As more people are buying everything in apps, and sometimes now as these apps are merging in one super app, the idea is that those companies have so much of your personal information, and that personal data is currency.”

Start Here · Policy · October 2026

Context

Asked about the FTC's probe into personalized pricing, Schulze explains why regulators sent orders to nine companies including DoorDash, Instacart, Uber, Delta and Walmart. All of them deny charging different people different prices.

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Transcript

Start Here Around 19:15 into the episode

Speaker 1

There's more opportunity and more ways to make money when you've got kind of delivery opportunities outside of just food and restaurants. And frankly, this is an attempt to try to compete with the biggest players in that delivery space, which are Amazon and Walmart. Well,

Brad Mielke

…put out a notice saying they've given word to several companies that they're sort of probing the idea of personalized pricing. And they specifically mentioned both of these companies. So are these companies just going to start charging us whatever like they think I'll pay based on my history?

Speaker 1

Right. So this is a huge topic that we have seen kind of bubbling up: this idea of our companies using technology and even AI to charge you a different price than somebody else if you're buying the same thing at the exact same time. And what the FTC is saying, it's going to look into this idea of personalized pricing. It issued these orders to Delta, United, JetBlue, Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, Target, and Walmart. So a huge array of very well-known consumer companies there to look into whether they are using factors like they say your participation in a loyalty program or your personal data to charge different prices. Immediately, we are hearing from the companies that this is not something they do. Walmart had already been out there saying that it prices the product, not the person. All of the airlines, the lobbying group for the airline, said that they comply with federal laws. They do not engage in these pricing practices. Instacart also put out a statement saying that does not engage in…

Brad Mielke

I don't know what anyone else is paying because I'm buying it on my phone or whatever. It's not a price tag on the shelf.

Speaker 1

Getting to the bottom of how this technology is used, the FTC says it wants to look into that. Companies are, of course, denying that they're doing this in the first place.

Brad Mielke

But I do also wonder if this kind of tells us anything about where the broader economy is heading because we keep talking about how everything costs too much, but apparently we're all happy to pay a premium for stuff to get to us. That's why DoorDash is doing so well. Is that why I looked up…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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