FTC Demands Answers on Personalized Pricing From Nine Companies

consumer data delta doordash ftc instacart jetblue loyalty programs lyft personalized pricing pricing technology regulation and compliance subscription pricing target uber united airlines walmart Oct 29, 2026

The agency wants to know how personal data influences what customers pay, what businesses gain from those pricing decisions and whether consumers benefit.

Airline fares rise with demand. Retailers run promotions. Prices change for all kinds of reasons, but what happens when the price someone sees also depends on what a company knows about them?

That's a question the Federal Trade Commission is investigating. On October 28, the agency ordered nine companies to provide detailed information about their pricing practices: Delta, United, JetBlue, Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, Target and Walmart.

Subscription businesses will recognize some of the practices involved. Introductory offers, loyalty benefits and retention discounts often depend on information about the customer. The FTC is examining how personal information influences prices, whether customers understand how that information is being used and what happens as a result.

The investigation also covers how ride-sharing and delivery companies determine which jobs workers receive and how much they're paid. The companies have 45 days from receiving their orders to respond.

These are information requests for an FTC study. No violations have been established through the orders. Delta and JetBlue have said they don't use personal information to set individual fares, while Instacart has said it doesn't use customers' personal information to determine prices.

What the FTC Wants to Know

The investigation goes into considerable detail about how companies set prices. The agency is asking what customer information goes into those decisions, where it comes from and how it affects the price someone sees. It also wants to understand the role of outside technology providers.

Pricing experiments are another focus. Companies are being asked to provide results from tests in which different groups of customers saw different prices or offers, including what those tests showed about sales, revenue and profits.

But the FTC is interested in the customer results, too. Did the pricing methods raise or lower what people paid? Did they make products or services affordable or accessible to more customers?

A pricing approach might increase revenue for a business while lowering prices for some customers. Other customers might end up paying more. The agency is asking for evidence about those outcomes, along with what people were told about the pricing practices themselves.

The requests extend to the exact wording and placement of customer disclosures. Most of the information being sought dates back to January 2023, although the questions about pricing research and experiments reach back to January 2021.

A New Step in the Personalized-Pricing Debate

The FTC has been examining personalized pricing for several years. Its earlier research focused on companies selling pricing technology to other businesses. This time, it's going directly to companies responsible for determining the prices customers pay.

In August, the commission separately proposed an enforcement policy addressing the use of personal information to set individual prices without adequate disclosure. Subscription Insider covered that proposal and the debate surrounding it.

The latest inquiry moves into actual business records, including how pricing decisions are made and what results they produce.

It doesn't finalize the proposed policy or establish that any of the nine companies engaged in unlawful conduct. Nor does it create a new rule for subscription pricing.

Why This Matters to Subscription Businesses

Different customers paying different prices is familiar territory for subscription operators. A new subscriber might receive an introductory rate, a longtime customer a loyalty benefit, or someone considering cancellation a discount to stay.

Those offers are common tools for acquiring and retaining subscribers. The FTC's orders define pricing broadly enough to include discounts, coupons and promotions, and the personal information being examined includes purchase and subscription history.

How that information is used makes a difference.

A publicly advertised introductory rate is relatively straightforward. A price calculated using a customer's browsing habits, purchasing history or estimated willingness to pay is a different situation, particularly if the customer doesn't realize that information is shaping the offer.

The FTC hasn't said familiar subscription discounts or retention offers are automatically unlawful. The information requests apply to the nine named companies, not subscription businesses generally.

Still, the investigation reaches into an area operators know well: using customer information to develop offers, test prices and understand how those decisions affect the business. The FTC is looking at the results from both sides, including what companies gained and what customers ended up paying.

INSIDER TAKE

When a subscription business tests a new price or retention offer, it usually knows what success looks like. More people subscribe, fewer cancel, or revenue improves. Those are useful results, but they may not tell the entire story of how different subscribers were affected.

Consider a retention offer that reduces cancellations. The business knows the campaign worked, but what did different groups of subscribers actually pay? Did the discounts help customers who otherwise couldn't afford to stay, or were they primarily going to people who would have renewed anyway?

The FTC is asking companies to show how their pricing experiments affected customers alongside the financial results.

It's an interesting addition to a debate that has focused heavily on data collection and disclosure. How businesses measure success, and whose experience those measurements capture, may tell us as much about personalized pricing as the technology itself.

Related Member Resources

Understanding how customer information influences pricing also means understanding where that information moves and which systems are involved. These resources help subscription operators examine those connections.

FTC Consumer Privacy, Data Use, and Data Security Enforcement Brief

Explains how the FTC examines customer-data practices, disclosures and the responsibilities businesses have when outside vendors handle customer information. It helps operators understand the privacy questions that can arise when subscriber information is collected, shared or used for new purposes.

Subscriber Journey Mapping & Audit Guide (Includes Worksheet)

Helps operators follow the subscriber experience across teams, systems and technology providers, from the initial offer through billing, service and cancellation. The guide and worksheet help document what customers see, where information and responsibilities pass between systems, and what evidence exists about those interactions. That can be particularly useful when reviewing how pricing offers are presented and managed.

Member Center resources are available to Subscription Insider members.