Oct 20, 2026
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On October 20, Lindsay Owens, President and CEO of Groundwork Collaborative, joined us as part of our Second Request series to discuss the rise of surveillance and algorithmic pricing, as examined in Owens’ new book, “Gouged: The End of a Fair Price—And What That Means for Your Wallet.” The full transcript, which has been modified slightly for accuracy, can be found below.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Hello, everyone, and welcome. I’m Teddy Downey, Executive Editor here at The Capitol Forum.
Today, I am thrilled to be joined by Lindsay Owens, President and CEO of Groundwork Collaborative. We’ll explore Groundwork Collaborative’s recently published “Shopper’s Bill of Rights,” which outlines policies to combat high-tech corporate pricing schemes, hidden fees, and surveillance pricing. We will also discuss insights from Lindsay’s bestselling book, “Gouged: The End of a Fair Price—and What That Means for Your Wallet.”
I know it’s 2026 and not a lot of people are reading. But The Capitol Forum community, we still read. It’s a great book. Please go out and get it. I’m so excited to talk about it. Lindsay, thanks so much for doing this today.
LINDSAY OWENS: Thanks so much for having me.
TEDDY DOWNEY: So, I wanted to start with you have this story in a recent newsletter about McDonald’s tracking a specific customer. I was wondering if you could start off with this McDonald’s story.
LINDSAY OWENS: Yeah, sure. So, this is the McRipoff. Yeah. So, Waylon, a Reuters reporter, broke a piece a couple of weeks ago that actually, I think, came out at sort of the perfect time for my book. Because he was sort of getting a lot of traction on algorithmic pricing at McDonald’s, and we were talking about algorithmic pricing in a whole host of other areas. But it followed —I think what you’re asking about is the Wired reporter.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Yeah, there was just this huge portfolio of data around this customer.
LINDSAY OWENS: Yeah, okay. So, there’s a Wired reporter, Reece Rogers, and he used a California data access law, a DSAR request, to get his data portfolio from McDonald’s. And this followed Jeffrey Fowler, who was a Washington Post reporter until recently, using the same data access request to get his Starbucks data.
And what Reese found is his portfolio of data at McDonald’s was 515 pages long, which is —I mean, obviously, this is someone who’d been to McDonald’s a lot of times, but also they’re leaving no stone unturned, right? They’re collecting historical data, every purchase, every visit, every tap in the app, even if you don’t end up making a purchase, right?
So, he has like a 515-page dossier. And one of the most interesting things he discovered is McDonald’s had calculated a lifetime attrition score for him. And this was an estimate of the likelihood that Reese would stop becoming a patron of McDonald’s. And his lifetime attrition score calculation was zero, which was just like such a great number for his story, right? Like, he’s obviously bearing it all. No shame. He’s talking about his 515-page dossier.
But I think, for me, it wasn’t very surprising. Because what we have shown in our research at Groundwork and what I talk about in the book is companies are collecting so much data on us to help them make determinations about what kind of customer we are, and, therefore, what kind of promotions we’re going to get, what kind of prices we’re going to get, and more. And a McDonald’s attrition score is very similar to the type of index that DoorDash built, which was their agitation index to figure out how hungry you were. This was a 16-factor index, how quickly you scrolled through the DoorDash app, how jerkily you scrolled through the DoorDash app—like, I guess your blood sugar was low—if your phone battery was low.
And this was a patent that we talked about in the first-ever Congressional hearing on surveillance pricing that Josh Hawley put on in the Judiciary Committee. And interestingly, we found out. when we wrote about the DoorDash patent for the Daily Mail—which is just, like, so interesting that this book is getting covered by the tabloids and the kind of elite players. But DoorDash responded to the Daily Mail and said, we withdrew that patent. And we went back into the patent database, and actually two days after we disclosed it in the Josh Hawley hearing, DoorDash withdrew that patent.
But these types of consumer intelligence scores, consumer sensitivity scores. Walmart has an appeasement engine patent, which we call the Karen patent. It is an analysis of your demographic information, and what they call your persona, that they use to determine how easy it is to get you to go away. Can they get you to go away by saying, go away? Do they actually need to offer you some pencil shavings, like maybe a little coupon? Or are they going to have to make it right to get you to go away? That’s the appeasement engine.
And all of this data is being collected. And these indices and algorithms and formulas are being built to help companies get better and better at determining how deeply they can reach into our wallet. But then, also, even things like when we’re going to get a discount or when we’re going to get a refund.
LINDSAY OWENS: Totally.
TEDDY DOWNEY: I hope I can achieve a 100 on appeasement score or a zero on appeasement score at some point. Reminds me of all the fights I’ve been in over the years with getting nickel and dimed by rental cars or whatever other consumer experience I’m having.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Now, you use a really interesting term here. You use profile. You use dossier. Bringing back to McDonald’s or Walmart or DoorDash or Kroger, they’re amassing these dossiers on you. How do you come to that word dossier?
LINDSAY OWENS: I think the word dossier, for me, I first encountered it when I learned about opposition research in Washington, D.C., right? You’re looking at the candidate that you’re running against, and you’re putting together a package of information about that candidate, all of the public information you can find. Like, do they vote? Like, have they paid their taxes? What have they said in every public forum that they’ve ever been in? What have they tweeted?
Groundwork uses opposition research techniques to analyze and investigate corporate America. And that’s really the model that we’ve built. We’ve ported over political opposition research to corporate America. So, we put together dossiers on companies. What have they told their investors? What have they told the patent office? What did they tell their buddies at the Goldman Sachs Retail Summit in New York last week when they thought their plebeian customers weren’t paying attention, right?
All of that we compile. And we use it not just to catch companies with their pants down – although, that is part of what we do. But what we really use it for is I think it is often closer to the truth that is hiding in plain sight of what companies are up to, what they view as their big revenue engines in the future, like, what your data means to them. Like, Walmart at the Goldman Sachs Retail Summit referred to the conversational data that they are getting when Walmart shoppers use Sparky as “gold.” Like, gold, right?
Our data from our conversations with their chatbot is giving them so much more visibility and information about their customer that they could never get because they didn’t have anyone who was asking us questions all day while we shopped, right? It’s a different world for them. And they view it as very lucrative and valuable, like a precious metal.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Yeah, yeah. I mean, if it’s a valuable commodity, it’s not just like these free services, right? Like, they’re getting something valuable from you in that transaction. To me, when I think of dossier, I think of private investigator, right? There are rules that are on the books in society for companies to track you when you don’t know about it, right? Like, there are laws on the books, particularly if you have any pictures.
LINDSAY OWENS: Yeah.
TEDDY DOWNEY: And what I’m curious about, from your perspective, is what happens from the real world where legislators will say, hey, you need to get a license to keep this type of information? But if it’s Meta, Facebook, or Walmart, or any other company, they’re allowed to do it even when they don’t have your permission, right?
Like, Meta has these shadow profiles. I mean, it’s well-documented. A lot of these companies, they don’t actually have explicit permission. They’re buying the data from somewhere else. Maybe at some point, someone accidentally signs away all their rights to that digital gold and their privacy. But they don’t really consent. No one’s really consenting for companies to have a dossier.
LINDSAY OWENS: Yeah.
TEDDY DOWNEY: And so, I’m curious how we went from a society that says we will have laws to limit this and regulate it and have licenses around it to a world in which there’s lawlessness and Meta and Walmart ostensibly can do whatever they want, right? They can collect whatever they want, have 500 pages of data and pictures of you unbeknownst to you.
LINDSAY OWENS: Okay. I’m going to start —I think I’m going to answer that question from where I think it comes from. And I’ll be really curious to hear your assessment of the legal infrastructure to protect our privacy, which seems to be virtually non-existent, and corporate surveillance. Like, we think about civil liberties and the government spying on us. But corporate surveillance has just expanded unabated, right?
Here’s what I’ll say. The main engine for me is clearly profit. And why do I think that? I mean, I’m not just being flip. Like, as we study these retail companies, more and more what we learn is they are no longer selling products alone.
So, Kroger is a great example. Grocery store. Thirty percent of Kroger’s net operating income comes from what they call their Alternative Profits Book of Business. And the Alternative Profits Book of Business includes the sale of your data. And Kroger, by the way, has one of the most valuable data properties the world over. Because 95 percent of Kroger transactions happen in their loyalty program. Because you can’t basically access any of the pricing at Kroger without using your loyalty program card.
And so, they have basically built very sophisticated dossiers on their customers. And it is decades of purchases. And you go to Kroger twice a week to pick up your groceries. So, the detail, the comprehensive nature, is so incredible that this is very valuable.
From what I understand —I was just talking to the supermarket guru, Phil Limpert, the other day. And he told me that Walmart’s media business is now also about a third of net operating income. And similarly, like Walmart’s data side, their partnerships, like their television and advertising partnerships —which is why they bought Vizio, the little like silly TV company —like all of that.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Oh, I have a Vizio story.
LINDSAY OWENS: Oh, really? Oh, yeah, go. I mean, I would love to hear it. This is the short answer, right? It’s very profitable.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Yeah, I lost my —I have a Vizio TV from before Walmart bought it. And which also, there are these stories about how the companies like Vizio left the camera on to like spy on the viewers and see what they were doing. Are they watching? Are their eyeballs on? I mean, crazy stuff.
But aside from that, I lose my remote. So, I get the app. I try to download the Vizio app. And honestly, the amount of data that I was going to have to hand over from my phone was just so astronomical, I just didn’t download the app. I just didn’t do it because I was so horrified about what I was going to have to agree to just to change the frigging channel.
LINDSAY OWENS: Vizio is like not really a TV company. It’s like a data harvester from what I understand. It’s like you have this idea where we’ll harvest your data like in your home.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Yeah, I think Roku is too. Obviously, Amazon has the Fire Stick. I mean, these are all ways to just collect a tremendous amount of data on you, not to necessarily provide you a consumer product, to your point. Which is kind of weird to think about Kroger as really one third data broker, two thirds supermarket.
I’m curious. Did you find that they register as data brokers? I mean, there are all these laws about data brokers. Have you found that the retailers are registering appropriately as data brokers in their jurisdictions?
LINDSAY OWENS: I haven’t looked into it. We haven’t looked into it. My guess is they are. I mean, they do, in the earnings calls and in the materials we review, they’re pretty careful about anonymized data. But there are all sorts of workarounds. Like there’s a Walmart patent that we were looking at and basically the whole patent was to figure out how to de-anonymize data as quickly as possible. And they were able to do it the minute you walked into the store using like tracking on your phone basically. They were like, oh, we know who that is. Like now we can pair the data.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Yeah. Let’s stay on Walmart because this is a fascinating situation. You are quickly emerging as enemy number one of Walmart. So, first, congratulations on that. That’s an incredible achievement. What is Walmart really afraid of here? What’s going on here? Tell us this Walmart story.
LINDSAY OWENS: Yeah, the Walmart story is a little nuts. Because if you read my book, or if you go to the index of my book, you’ll see that Walmart is definitely in the book. It’s in several sections. I talk about the fact that Walmart is rolling out electronic shelf labels in all of their stores by the end of this year. And that’s part of the dynamic pricing chapter. I talk about agentic commerce in the book, like the future of shopping with AI. And Sparky, Walmart’s chat bot, is in my book. But it’s not really a centerpiece of the book in the way that some other companies like RealPage are more front and center as villains in the book. But Walmart has become a big part of the story of the book in the media and in the public because Walmart weighed in on my book.
So, here’s what happened. I went on Jon Stewart and I talked about Walmart’s tuna mayonnaise patent. And by the way, this is their example from their patent. I didn’t make this up. Walmart has a patent for scan-and-go technology. This is when you use your phone in the brick-and-mortar store to like scan items and put them in your cart so that checkout is easier. And their scan-and-go patent talks about how they can vary pricing for complementary items. Like complementary —not like I but with an E. And the example they give is let’s say a shopper puts tuna in their cart. We can change the price for mayonnaise. Their example.
So, I mentioned this on Jon Stewart. He goes nuts. It goes very viral. I think he said, oh, shit. It was a very dramatic moment. And he made a really funny joke about Sloppy Joes and how they know you’ve got to have a bun. Otherwise, the meat’s just falling through your fingertips.
And so, Walmart wrote a letter, an open public letter, that they released the Friday before my book came out. My book came out on a Tuesday. And you could sort of argue that it was a broader letter, but it was really a subtweet of all the stuff that we talked about on Jon Stewart. And as a result, when my book came out three days later, everyone was asking me about Walmart. What’s going on with Walmart? What did the CEO say? So, then I got like 50 interviews about Walmart. And by the end of the week, I had effectively quadrupled down on all of my positions about Walmart.
So, then book launch week is over. I’m like, oh, I’m going to go back to my normal, quiet life. It’s like 4.30 on a Monday. I’m headed home to finally be home in time for dinner with my family. And my team knocks on my door in the office, and they’re like, hey, Lindsay. Just wanted to let you know, Walmart has put out a second letter, and this one is addressed to you personally.
So, they tweeted it, and they put it on their website, and they emailed it to me. But it says, Dear Ms. Owens. And then it asks me to correct the record. Because they feel like people —as a result of my comments about Sparky and their patents —are getting the wrong idea about what is actually happening in Walmart stores right now versus like what could be happening in the future.
And so, I responded immediately and did two things. The first thing I said is like, the confusion is of your own making. You are saying one thing to your investors at the Goldman Retail Summit and in your earnings calls. You’re saying another thing to the Patent Office about the technologies you’re building and where your company is headed. And then you’re saying an entirely different thing in these cleanup letters that you’re like posting constantly to me. And that is where the confusion lies. And I think it’s time for consumers to understand which it is. Are you serious about not using this data against people? If so, here are some steps you could take that would make people take you seriously.
But I also, my organization had put together a whole host of additional analysis of Walmart’s patents going back over a decade, and we hadn’t released it yet. But I felt like when Walmart was accusing us of spreading misinformation, it was time to release more information, more data, and let people see for themselves.
So, we released a report called “Walmart Watchtower” that overviews a whole host of additional technologies that Walmart has built and patented or has applied for a patent for over the last decade. And that’s kind of where we are today.
TEDDY DOWNEY: But they’ve also said, hey, we’re not going to do any personalized pricing. I can’t remember their exact statement, but they came out with this big release. But what are some of these patents? Like what are some of the practices that they have that make it kind of hard to believe that they’re not going to try to monetize it? You already mentioned the digital gold comment to the investors. That sort of makes it hard to believe that you’re not going to monetize these pricing schemes or data schemes to get higher prices. But what else are you saying?
LINDSAY OWENS: There are a few different threads to the debate that we’re having with Walmart. And one of them centers on Sparky, which is Walmart’s chat bot. And what in addition to saying that the data that Sparky is collecting from us is gold? And by the way, you have to log in and give over a ton of your information to use Sparky in the Walmart app. So, like your conversations with Sparky are absolutely pegged to you as a consumer, right? Like that seems virtually undeniable. And they’re just saying that they won’t misuse that information.
But the other thing that they’re saying over and over again about Sparky is that Sparky’s – so, now 50 percent of Walmart shoppers are engaging Sparky in the app. So, Walmart shoppers who shop in the Walmart app are engaging Sparky 50 percent of the time. So, that’s a lot. I mean, this is millions and millions of Sparky enabled transactions.
The big thing that they brag about is that Sparky cart totals are 40 percent higher than non-Sparky cart totals. And it used to be 30 percent a couple of months ago. And when they went to the Goldman Retail Summit last month, they were like, great news, 40 percent guys. And so, it raises a question what is Sparky doing, right? How is Sparky getting those cart totals higher?
And Walmart’s position is just that Sparky is really helpful, right? And as a result, cart totals are higher because people are getting more of what they need. And that is possible. And also, there are other things that are possible given how much information Sparky has about you. Sparky could be steering you to higher priced products. Sparky could be upselling you. Sparky could be a really good bundler. We know that Sparky is a good closer. Like, it helps remind you to get out your credit card and finish the transaction in the way that like lots of e‑commerce sites have gotten good at, like sending you an email being like, you left this in your cart, right?
But I think agentic commerce, we’re really on the precipice. Like there’s an inflection point here. And will agentic commerce and these agents and these personal assistants help us do things that are mind numbing and the drudgery of e-commerce and comparison shopping and all those things? And/or will these agents become some of the most sophisticated snake oil salesmen the world has ever known? And we don’t know the answer to that yet.
That being said, the major studies of agentic commerce out there do suggest —like there was a recent one where they did 325,000 different AI assistant experiments. And what they found is —even when you explicitly told your assistant to go get the lowest priced item —many of the assistants went rogue, looked in people’s emails, saw that they had more money and then returned products that were $100 or $200 more expensive than the cheapest option. They made that determination on their own, the AI assistants.
So, anyway, Sparky is a big piece of what Walmart and I are kind of beefing about. The other piece that we’re beefing about is what is going to happen with the electronic shelf labels in Walmart. And they’re swearing up and down that they don’t do dynamic pricing. But they’re defining dynamic pricing as changing prices based on weather, which leaves a lot of other forms of dynamic pricing on the table. And I have talked about weather just because it’s a very understandable example. And so, they’re saying she’s wrong. We’re not going to charge you more for soup on a hot day, which is a hypothetical example that I sometimes use.
But what they haven’t said is actually how the electronic shelf labels are going to be used for dynamic pricing. They say that the prices are controlled by Walmart as they always have been. But that tells us nothing about Walmart’s algorithmic pricing, what’s being sent to the shelf labels, what determines which retail locations get which prices and the like. So, that’s a point of contention.
And then the final point of contention is really about personal data, as you mentioned. Like the amount of data Walmart is collecting. And part of the reason Walmart’s under fire is not just my book. They recently changed their privacy policy and people really responded aggressively to it on TikTok and Reddit, like lots of reels and just customers out there ticked off about it.
But the new privacy policy includes the fact that Walmart is collecting biometric data potentially. Retinal scanning is in the new privacy policy. Other biometric indicators. Walmart has a patent for measuring how excited you get based on comparing your heart rate to your baseline heart rate via connectivity to wearables. Similarly, they mentioned glucose levels. So, I mean, the range of invasive data here is really beyond what you could imagine Walmart needing in the day-to-day of selling Tide detergent and milk.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Yeah, you mentioned this coming together of privacy and personalized pricing. Over the years, we’ve covered privacy for almost all the 15 years that we’ve been around. And it just doesn’t seem to ever get through, from a public standpoint or a policymaker standpoint, to matter enough or get change. But we have seen a lot more of a visceral reaction to personalized pricing.
So, the implementation of getting all this data, sort of doing the surveillance, abusing your privacy, for example, and then weaponizing it into higher profits. This actual second piece —even though the Googles of the world have been doing this through their sort of like search markets and things like that —the more direct it is the more direct experience you have with it in the supermarket or what have you, in your bills, it does seem to be breaking through as a voter issue, a citizen issue. Are you seeing the same thing? Do you have any stories about how some of the things that you’re finding are really resonating with the public?
LINDSAY OWENS: Yeah, I think you’re exactly right. I mean, folks who were talking about privacy a decade ago were kind of viewed as like fringe cranks, right? Like, oh, you’re talking about this issue. Like, this isn’t central to American politics. Like, is this like a libertarian issue in Oregon? Like it was just this kind of fringe perspective.
And I do think Americans’ concerns about privacy are shifting in this moment. Of course, surveillance pricing, I think, is particularly potent because it’s the intersection of being spied on and being ripped off. And we’re in a moment right now where cost of living and affordability are top of mind for Americans.
We’re also in a moment where most Americans have the same diagnosis of what’s wrong with the economy, corporate power, right? So, I think for those reasons surveillance pricing is very potent and resonant right now. And one sort of good thing about the conversation about surveillance pricing is it’s really shining a light on those privacy practices.
I also think the national conversation around flock cameras happening at the same time suggests that privacy quo, privacy is becoming more central to American politics. And Americans have more concerns about privacy in the public sphere, whether it’s corporations spying on you in the drive-through or flock cameras spying on you between the time you put your turn signal on and get into the drive-through.
The last thing I’ll say about this —look, I think part of the reason why surveillance pricing hits so hard is that I do think companies did a really good job of convincing you that you were trading your privacy for benefits, right? We’re going to track everything you watch on Netflix, but the end result is going to be this tailored recommendation of your absolute favorite surgical strike Lindsay Owens rom-com that she’s just going to love and we’re just going to keep serving them to you, right? Or we’re going to harvest all of your data in our loyalty program, but you’re going to get perks and freebies and other inducements, and that’s going to be a good deal.
And I think what surveillance pricing, like the conversation around surveillance pricing and the existence of surveillance pricing, reveals is that the trade was a fiction. Actually, you traded your data not to get a deal, but for them to now turn it around against you, weaponize it to rip you off and overcharge you. And that, to me, I think is one of the reasons why surveillance pricing is hitting so hard is it really shows the false promise of the trade that we were told we were making. Give up your privacy, get this other stuff in exchange.
TEDDY DOWNEY: And so, I think we’ve talked a lot about the problems here. You and Groundwork have done a lot on solutions. Can you tell us a little bit about your work on the Shopper’s Bill of Rights and how you came up with that?
LINDSAY OWENS: Yeah. So, we wanted to make sure that we didn’t just scream and yell and hem and haw about what corporations were up to, that we also provided a path forward. And I will say, personally, it was very interesting to go through the process of selling my book.
Because in almost every conversation I had with every publisher and every imprint —and as there aren’t that many left because they’re all only a few major publishing houses, over and over again, they were like, this is an amazing proposal. This book is going to be awesome. But you forgot the chapter about all the tips and tricks the consumer can use to get a fair price. And I was like, hmm, like, I didn’t forget that chapter. Like, I don’t believe it should be up to the consumer to bob and weave and duck and dodge and beat the machine.
In the end, we split the difference. And I offered both tips and tricks and my view, which is that this is the job of policymakers to make sure the economy is fair and honest and to rebalance the playing field between corporations and shoppers. But the publisher’s not wrong. I mean, every media interview I give, what are the tips? What are the tricks? And I think you don’t want to leave people feeling completely hopeless. And I worked in Congress for many years. I know that telling someone to call their lawmaker rings hollow. They’re like, thanks. Like, great. I’m sure they’ll get to that never, right?
TEDDY DOWNEY: Yeah, yeah.
LINDSAY OWENS: So, anyway, we split the difference. But the Shopper’s Bill of Rates is the piece of the book that I wanted to expand upon at Groundwork, to make sure the book could be part of a call to action and to use the conversation around the book to support movement on these policies in the States.
Okay, Shopper’s Bill of Rates, modeled after JFK’s Consumer Bill of Rights. He expresses four rights. The one that is most vivid for me was the right to safety. This was a period in which new electronics were arriving on the shelves, the post-industrial manufacturing age, and people would take a toaster oven home and it would short and burn their house down. And that was a problem.
So, we got the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission can do something really important and cool, which is issue a recall and say, no, no. That toaster comes back. That car comes back and either goes into the garbage bin or gets an update or an upgrade.
So, I think it is similarly time for consumers to have new rights in the e-commerce era, in the brick-and-mortar high-tech era, right? These electronic shelf labels, the video screens, and the end caps that are looking at you while you shop. And especially now in the agentic commerce era because we are really entering uncharted territory.
The other thing I’ll say is I often feel like our consumer solutions feel really ticky-tacky on their own, like junk fees. Nobody likes junk fees. But a national campaign around junk fees is not going to change culture, right? And so, bundling up some of these smaller consumer protections into a larger package that says, hey, the whole game is rigged. We’ve got to update it, soup to nuts, felt better for me, having something meatier, weightier, more holistic.
So, what’s included in the Shopper’s Bill of Rights? A lot of things. A ban on surveillance pricing and the right to one fair price. We are waiting for Kathy Hochul to sign the One Fair Price Act in New York. It’s on her desk. She has until the end of the year, but we would like for that to happen today instead of December 31st.
It includes the right to a refund. I think most Americans are ready to be able to get a refund without battling a chatbot for three hours, and they would also like to get a refund on the payment method that they made their purchase in. I mean, in e-commerce, companies auto-populate your credit card information in a New York minute. They can give you the refund on your credit card instead of a store credit.
It does include all-in pricing. I mean, I don’t hate the junk fees work. I think it’s really important. And all-in pricing is really important for comparison shopping. It includes unit pricing. You should be able to compare the unit price of items. And we actually don’t have federal protections for unit pricing. Some states do. But companies are using all sorts of tricks, different types of product packaging sizes. It just makes comparison really difficult.
There is a lot in the Shopper’s Bill of Rights about comparison shopping, and I’ll just say one note on that. So, many of these new pricing technologies erode comparison shopping. Personalized pricing erodes comparison shopping because you get a unique price. You don’t know what the reference price is to compare across other stores.
Dynamic pricing erodes comparison shopping because prices become so volatile, by the time you get to store B, the price has changed in store A, right? And comparison shopping and budget shoppers are the mechanism by which prices are competitive in our economy. We talk about it as a big economic concept, like a theoretical concept, but what is it on the ground? It’s shoppers in store A being like, hmm, that price seems high to me. Going to store B, finding a better deal. Shopkeeper in store A, hmm, nobody’s in the store today. Maybe I have to lower my prices.
Like, that’s how this works fundamentally on the ground. And I think so many of these pricing tricks and high-tech pricing technologies that I describe in the book are really fundamentally about undermining comparison shopping because that undermines shoppers’ ability to discipline the market and achieve fair and lower prices.
TEDDY DOWNEY: I want to get to listener questions in a second here. I’ve got one last question, then we’ll get to listener questions. If you have a question, just put it in the chat and we’ll get to it shortly.
So, there’s a big expectation that Democrats are going to win potentially a wave election or at least win the House and maybe pick up some seats in state houses and state AGs, governor positions in November, two weeks away. This Shoppers’ Bill of Rights that you have, what else —if you’re really going to be enemy number one of Walmart, you must be in favor of Robinson-Patman Act enforcement and legislation potentially around things like that.
LINDSAY OWENS: Yes.
TEDDY DOWNEY: What would you like to see to have a more competitive retail space? I mean, I had a call with Hal Singer and he said that you can’t actually get profits from personalized pricing if there isn’t —you only can extract rent when there’s no competition. Because if there’s personalized pricing and there’s competition, you can just go next —there’s no rent to extract. There’s no surplus to get because you’ve got the competitive price. You’ve got a low margin situation anyway because the person could just go next door.
Like if there’s two supermarkets literally next door to each other and you feel like you’re getting ripped off, you can just go next door. I think that’s a little myopic. Because once you’re in a store and in the checkout, and you have the tuna and you’re getting the mayonnaise, you’re not really going to go next door. It’s too annoying to even consider at that point. But if you’re heading to the store and, hey, I might get ripped off here, I can go there.
Anyway, the competitive environment, obviously, the more competitive it is the less ability there is to kind of do this, I think, at some level. And so, what do you want to see from a legislative standpoint? Shopper’s Bill of Rights, anything else we should be paying attention to post-election year?
LINDSAY OWENS: Yeah, I’m going to take the anything else piece of that question. Because I do have something on this, which is I want to see blockbuster investigations into corporate pricing. I want to see CEOs hauled before Congress and asked about these pricing practices. I want to see subpoenas that get us better information on exactly what’s under the hood here.
And I view that as imperative for the new Congress. I think if they pick up the gavels and run back the 2019 playbook of impeachment —and hauling in all the Trump cabinet officials and backward looking and what will look like political theater and partisan motivated hearings and investigations —that would be a huge missed opportunity to instead demonstrate that this is a party that is willing to go after and hold corporate America to account. And I really think that’s what the American people want to see from the new Congress.
I’m also interested in legislative options too, particularly if we have both chambers. And I think it would be tough for President Trump to veto a Shopper’s Bill of Rights. This is quite literally retail politics.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Or a cap on credit card interest rates.
LINDSAY OWENS: Totally, totally.
TEDDY DOWNEY: It seems like it would be tough for him to reforms to debit card interchange, credit card interchange. It seems like that would be hard for him to veto. I wouldn’t put it past him to be honest.
LINDSAY OWENS: But that’s a good fight. That’s a good fight for us to have. You win the policy or you win the politics or you win both. That is a good fight for us to have. Putting my kind of more partisan hat on, I’ve been working in Washington since 2014. And since 2014, it’s been a kind of law of physics that Republicans have the upper hand on the economy. They’re more trusted on the economy. They’re better managers of the economy. And along with that was the neoliberal economic paradigms dominance. This idea that tax cuts and a light touch with business is how you are a strong manager and a trusted manager of the economy.
For the first time in nearly 25 years, that has unraveled. And Republicans’ numbers on the economy are well below Democrats’ numbers on the economy. That has nothing to do with people thinking Democrats are any good on the economy. Nothing. It just has to do with the bottom falling out for conservatives. And I think there’s a real opportunity in that shift —which like I said, it’s been 25 years since this has happened —to usher in a new paradigm on the economy and the party who offers that new paradigm on the economy. And I think, again, Americans have a clear diagnosis of what’s wrong with the economy. Corporations have too much power. I think the party that seizes that mantle will have an advantage for decades to come.
And so, I do want to see a Shopper’s Bill of Rights, but I want to see so much more. I want to see a full-throated appreciation of the need to get corporate power in this country under control. I want to see CEOs in the hot seat. At some point soon, I want to see jail time, candidly. Because I just think the cost-benefit here is all off. The rewards to these practices are immense, in pay, in stock. And the consequences are barely there.
So, I think we’ve got some big shifts and some big work to do. But I do have some optimism because it was, like I said, a law of nature that the kind of conservative dominance on the economy was strong and impenetrable, and that’s not true anymore.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Yeah, we’ll see. I mean, it is an interesting time because the Watergate baby boom of Democrats is kind of coming to an end. I mean, my father among them. So, I’m very aware. It’s sort of ushering out the Watergate babies. And it will be interesting to see if this new generation of Democrats would be not neoliberal in its orientation or just even care about the will of the voter, really more of a fundamental level, like listen to the voter and say, what? Oh, you’re upset with the status quo? You’re upset with pricing? You’re upset with corporate power? Are you going to do anything about it?
I look at Schumer, and I think, no. I look at Hakeem Jeffries, probably not. So, I think there’s a perfectly reasonable group of people to say, I don’t want to expect the Democrats to do anything. But then I think that ignores the potential for just having a lot of new Democrats come in. And it’s interesting to see will they be open‑minded? Will they be wanting to learn?
And really quickly, CEOs on the hot seat. Give me some from your book that you would really like to see get subpoenaed.
LINDSAY OWENS: I mean, look, I’d like to see McDonald’s come in and explain what it’s doing with algorithmic pricing. I’d like to see Walmart come in and explain exactly how Sparky works to get cart totals up to 40 percent and what their plan is to protect our data when we use Sparky. I’d like to see Instacart explaining the changes they’ve made since our study dropped last year, and they agreed not to use the Eversight platform.
I’d like to see the airline CEOs back in again. I mean, the Delta partnership with Fetcher, the AI company, who, by their own admission, has an exploitation phase as part of their pricing. I have some questions for them. I’m sure there are a number of lawmakers who do too.
I know Frank Pallone has asked a number of major retailers questions about surveillance pricing. I think that’s Walmart, Costco, Kroger —I’m forgetting the fourth one, maybe Target. I’d like to see all of them in. And I’d like to see more about what happened with that hearing or what’s going on with that investigation. Maybe Frank Pallone will have more power in January to make sure that he gets the answers that he hopes for.
We’ve done some polling on this, and what Americans are most interested in seeing in the hot seat is pharma and healthcare execs, health insurance execs. They’re interested in oil and gas execs. And then third is Big Tech and AI. I think there’s a chance that by the time January rolls around, Big Tech and AI is up higher. AI, in particular, is up higher than it was in the poll that we did a month ago. But that’s what folks are interested in.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Super interesting. Let’s move to listener questions. We’ve got a bunch here. We’ve got a bunch.
First, you mentioned the airline industry. Interested to hear your thoughts on surveillance pricing in the airline industry, particularly the new tools allowing competitors to see one another’s dynamic prices.
LINDSAY OWENS: Yeah. So, in the book, I talk about Fetcher, which is an artificial intelligence company that built what they call a market-level LLM, where they explore an entire industry, an entire market. Delta partners with Fetcher. They handover one percent of their routes to Fetcher, let them muck around with them. And then they tell their investors on Investor Day, hey, great news. Revenues are up. We’re now going to give Fetcher 20 percent of our data. This was interesting to us. We started looking into Fetcher. Found on Fetcher’s website two things.
One, a blog post about Fetcher’s plans for personalized pricing, which the Delta CEO discussed in the Investor Call. And two, Fetcher’s white paper about how the model works. First, its exploration phase where it learns the market, learns the routes, learns the competitors, learns the consumers, monitors the dynamic pricing of other airlines. And second, the exploitation phase where Fetcher starts dialing up prices left and right for every fare on every route on Delta service.
And we gave that information over to some reporters. It was a big story. Ultimately, American and Southwest came out and said, we would never do this. Delta backtracked. But there’s no legal enforcement to that backtracking.
I really think —we had the JetBlue story over the summer where the JetBlue passenger tweeted, hey, I’m trying to get to a funeral. Why did my price hike $200 overnight? And then the JetBlue Twitter account responded, have you tried shopping in an incognito window or clearing your cash or cookies? Kind of a confession in broad daylight on the X platform. JetBlue has denied that they use data, personal data, in pricing. But I think I have a lot of questions about that.
Unfortunately, the Department of Transportation just sunset their investigation into this, which was launched under Buttigieg and said they didn’t have any findings. It is a little hard to believe that Sean Duffy’s operation is administering strong investigations.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Yeah, I mean, you can literally just pull up prices of flights right next to the person you’re standing next to and you get different numbers for the exact same flight. So, I mean, it’s so obvious that they’re doing this. And if you want more stuff on Fetcher and airlines, obviously, you can go in The Capitol Forum Library. We’ve been covering that as well.
More questions here. Oh, we’ve got a really long one here. This summer, D.C. Council unanimously passed a bill that accomplished a couple of things from your Shopper’s Bill of Rights. Resale caps, all-in pricing, a ban on surveillance pricing for event tickets. And it was driven primarily by local musicians and local venues and arts nonprofits.
But last week, Ticket Policy Forum, the trade group for resellers like SeatGeek, StubHub, and Vivid Seats sued the District to try and stop the law from going into effect on January 1st. And just like similar lawsuits going after state and local consumer protection authority, the lawsuit made the familiar constitutional claims about dominant commerce clause and bogus First Amendment claims. I mean, I think dormant. Oh, I don’t know. Anyway, First Amendment claims that transparency provisions are compelled speech. What’s our strategy to fight back against attacks on regulatory authority? And how can we build more effective partnerships between consumer advocates like you and the artist community?
LINDSAY OWENS: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. We don’t really have a robust consumer movement in this country. When I studied the last period of high inflation, one of the things that was really interesting to me was the partnership between consumer movements and labor unions to fight for fair pricing for essentials. There was a movement called COIN. It was the Committee Opposed to the Inflation of the Necessities. It was kind of a collab between all of the major labor unions and the Naderites. And we’ve really lost that in this country.
But I think where you see interesting developments are in spaces like this, where you have artists and occupational solidarity and movement formations fighting back against some of these corporate practices and the way that it influences their bottom line. It’s been great to see what Hollywood actors have been able to do around the Paramount merger. I mean, there’s so much collective action. It’s just really great to see.
I will say the personalized pricing and ticketing is astounding. We just did an experiment on the Today Show around StubHub where we had the production team for the Today Show buy Harry Styles concert tickets at Madison Square Garden for the same row on the same night.
And what we found is prices varied, not for the underlying ticket because it’s ticket resellers. They weren’t the ones running the shenanigans. But the StubHub fees varied by as much as $60 per person. The StubHub fee is to send you a QR code, right? $60 more for some individuals than others. When we went into incognito mode, the fee dispersion shrunk to $4 instead of $60.
Now, StubHub said they were just running randomized experiments like Instacart. They said they don’t use personalized pricing. It seems hard to believe that incognito mode washed out $56 worth of fee dispersion if personal data wasn’t at play. But obviously, we don’t know the full story. But yes, the ticket sellers —Ticketmaster switched to dynamic pricing in 2011. It was the same year that Uber rolled out surge pricing. This was a big year for changes in pricing technology.
But I think dynamic pricing has been terrible for the concert industry. It’s part of the reason why concerts are so expensive in this country. And, of course, it’s made possible by the monopoly that Ticketmaster and Live Nation have.
But yeah, when I was a kid, you lined up for tickets. And when there were two seats left, the first two people in line got the tickets at face value. Now, what happens with Ticketmaster online is when there are two seats left, it’s effectively like if the ticket seller had walked out of the booth and said, oh, there’s 60 people left in line. Let the bidding begin, right? Auctioning off the last two tickets. That’s what dynamic pricing enables in the concert sector. That’s why prices are so high.
And that’s why working class families in the U.S. like work all week and can’t see a concert. And this is something that Americans are frustrated about. And I think moving back into an economy where we can not only work, but also enjoy the little things and occasional concert and occasional baseball game is what a lot of Americans are looking for. And that’s a very abstract way of saying, I actually think these ticket fights are like foundational to society.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Well, also, if you go through the court cases, yes, corporations are winning some of these fights on, well, I have free speech rights to do price gouging, right? Like, I mean, there’s just something so ludicrous on one level about it. It kind of pushes this critical inflection point in the courts of, you’re really removing what the courts are doing from the will of the people. Like you’re really radicalizing the courts in a way that calls for a more radical response from Congress.
And so, I think you’re going to see these really, really much more aggressive fights between Congress and the courts than we ever have in our lifetime. Really neoliberals have been like, yeah, we believe in the court’s complete dominance over us, right? I mean, for 40 years, you’ve just sort of had this permissive relationship between Congress and the courts. And now the courts have said, hey, no. We have a king. You must be subject to the king. And then also, the king cannot be —nothing can happen to the king. He can’t be held accountable for any crimes he’s doing while in office.
And then also, like you said, these get out of jail free cards for these companies. I just think at some point when you have a ticketing company that’s very not well liked, right? Like, it’s one thing for some companies that are not hated, like Google or what have you, to say, look, I have free speech rights with my algorithm, than for Ticketmaster or StubHub to be making the same arguments is kind of jumping the shark at some level in the court process.
So, we’ll see how those all play out. We’ll see how this court reform debate plays out. But I am excited about that as well after the elections.
Here, we’ve got a question. Does your book touch on arbitration clauses and class action waivers?
LINDSAY OWENS: No, but there’s a great new book that does. Have you guys talked to Brendan Ballou?
TEDDY DOWNEY: Brendan Ballou, close friend of The Capitol Forum. Absolutely great book. Already had him on, yeah.
LINDSAY OWENS: Yeah, he’s got it covered.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Yes, please check out his book. Again, we read here in The Capitol Forum community. So, great book out there. Go check out that interview as well.
Last question here. Federal legislative action seems dicey, at least until the next presidential election. What’s your strategy at the state level? I’m not sure I agree with this premise, but go ahead, Lindsay. What are you looking at the state level when it comes to legislation around pricing?
LINDSAY OWENS: Look, we’ve had upwards of 90 pieces of legislation in the last 18 months to take on algorithmic pricing at the state and local level, and there’s a lot of progress being made. We just had a Seattle ordinance around cutting back on algorithmic pricing in grocery stores. We’ve had a little bit of movement in Maryland, although some concerns about that proposal. We’ve had some movement in New Jersey and Connecticut.
We had an amazing bill in Colorado, vetoed by Polis, unfortunately. But the biggest fish right now on the state horizon is the bill that is sitting on Kathy Hochul’s desk. And I think if she signs that law, as is, that would be huge for consumers. I think it will have a ripple effect throughout the country.
Unfortunately, I worry that the delay on her part means we’re likely to see a lot of watering down and undermining of the current legislation through their charter amendment process, which is sort of a unique New York process. But holding out hope for that, and I think that she is likely to sign it, and I hope she does so soon.
TEDDY DOWNEY: And also, Colorado is going to have a new governor soon.
LINDSAY OWENS: That’s right. They take another run at it.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Far more likely to sign that bill should it come up again. So, I actually think Colorado, very, very important state to watch on this front, has been a leader on this from a legislative standpoint, even though they haven’t been able to get it across the goal line. Kathy Hochul, very unpopular. We’ll see if she can —we’ll see what she does here with this bill. But Lindsay, congratulations on the book. Congratulations on being enemy number one for Walmart. Thank you so much for doing this.
LINDSAY OWENS: Thanks so much for having me, Teddy. It was really nice to be with you today and appreciate all the great questions.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Yeah, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. You can find this conversation as well as our “Second Request” podcast. Also, we have a great podcast, “Private Credit Crisis,” that you should check out. We have an event coming up on November 12th. If you’re interested in these kinds of conversations, you’re perfect. You read books. You’re the perfect person for our November 12th —right after the elections —conversation about private credit, private equity, what the next Congress will do about that. So, please check all of that out. Hope to see you then. And thanks to everyone for joining the call today. This concludes the call. Bye-bye.
