Answered from #693 - Consumer Advocate Lindsay Owens · This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von · 2026-11-03
Lindsay Owens told Theo Von that Groundwork Collaborative, working with Consumer Reports and More Perfect Union, recruited 400 volunteer shoppers to load the same 23 grocery items from the same store into Instacart. For 75% of the items, Instacart showed different shoppers different prices at the same moment, with gaps as large as 23%. Owens said Instacart called it routine A/B testing, and about two weeks after the study it said shoppers at the same store and time would pay the same price.
“Instacart was charging different people different prices at the exact same time for the exact same item.” Lindsay Owens · at 25:19 — open in the transcript →
Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von (2026-11-03). Read the whole episode summary →