NEW YORK (AP) — Instacart said Monday that it’s ending a program where some customers saw different prices for the same product ordered at the same time from the same store when using the delivery company’s service.
The program was meant to help grocers and other retailers learn more about what kinds of prices customers would pay for items, similar to how stores offer different prices for the same products at different locations. But it raised alarms after a report from Consumer Reports and two progressive advocacy groups, Groundwork Collaborative and More Perfect Union, said Instacart offered nearly three out of every four grocery items to shoppers at multiple prices in an experiment.
“At a time when families are working exceptionally hard to stretch every grocery dollar, those tests raised concerns, leaving some people questioning the prices they see on Instacart,” the company said in a Monday blog post. “That’s not okay – especially for a company built on trust, transparency, and affordability.”
Retailers will continue to set their own prices on the delivery website and they may still offer different prices at different brick-and-mortar locations, Instacart said, but “from now on, Instacart will not support any item price testing services.”
Instacart said these services were neither “ dynamic pricing,” a system where the price for something can go up when demand is high, nor “surveillance pricing,” where prices can be set based on a user’s income, shopping history or other personal information. Instead, the company said it was offered to customers at random.