When you walk through the aisles of a store, the price you see marked is the price you get, and it’s the same for everyone. However, when you’re shopping online, it’s hard to know if someone else is getting a better deal than you.
Every time you enter your email, phone number or credit card information online, your data is collected and can be used to create a profile about who you are and how you shop. Whether you’ve been shopping in a competitor’s app, how long your mouse hovered over a product, or even how fast you’re scrolling is all data that’s collected and can be used by retailers to charge you a different price. It’s called surveillance pricing.
The shoppers we talked to said this pricing practice is unfair and is discriminatory.
“It is creepy,” Marino Swanson of Swissvale said. “It’s something that is actually scary. It’s absolutely discrimination, just in a different context. In ways that people don’t notice.”
In January, the Federal Trade Commission released the preliminary findings of a study looking into the pricing practice. Researchers looked at how companies like data brokers and credit providers use surveillance pricing services to build a profile about you that’s sold to retailers and how that information can help them set your price.
Dr. Alan Mislove is a data privacy expert at Northeastern University in Boston who worked on the study.
“Consumers think this is very unfair,” Dr. Mislove said. “They feel like they’re getting ripped off.”
Sara Geoghegan works for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, also known at EPIC. The center helps protect consumers’ digital privacy. She says third party companies track so much we’re not aware of.
“This is creepy and invasive,” Geoghegan said. “Things like monitoring how long you stay on a page, how many seconds of a video you watch, how much you linger over a link.”
Mislove and Geoghegan say surveillance pricing is really hard to catch because so much of it happens in secret.
So we tried to catch it happening on camera. Teaming up with our sister stations from around the country, we asked dozens of shoppers in eight cities to check the prices of six products, three times a day at some of the nation’s most popular stores. We recruited people of different ages, races, income levels and shopping habits. Some were signed into apps, others shopped on websites anonymously.
We found some people were charged a different price for the same item at the same time.
A Samsung TV at Walmart was priced $877.95 for some, $898 for others, but for one of our shoppers in Atlanta, it was priced at $1047.90.
In Orlando, one of our price checkers saw a Blackstone grill at Lowes for $369 but everyone else saw it for $299.
We told shoppers about our findings. The most common response was ‘that’s not fair.’
“Pricing should be equal for everyone,” Hillary Lloyd of Wilkins Township said. “Not due to where you live or what your income is.”
We asked the experts what you can do to help find the lowest price.
- Shop on a store’s website using a private browser and compare that price to what you see on the store’s app
- Try entering different zip codes for your location
- Clear your search history after shopping
- Leave an item in your online cart for a day or two. You may get a promo code to get you to come back and click buy!
11 Investigates reached out to all of the retailers used in the price checks. Walmart and Target both said they do not use surveillance pricing. Home Depot said customers may see price differences based on what store they’ve selected online.
The full statements from the retailers who responded to 11 Investigates are below:
“Target does not use surveillance pricing.” -Target spokesperson
“Walmart adheres to an everyday low-price strategy focused on offering consistently low prices to deliver on our purpose of helping customers save money and live better. We know that price matters to our customers, and they can count on us to be an advocate for them to get the best prices possible.” -Walmart spokesperson
“We go to great lengths to ensure consistent pricing for our customers throughout their entire experience with us across online and in our stores. Our customers may see price differences depending on what they have selected as their local store online, and those prices may vary based on geography. Pro Xtra members can qualify for discounts and other benefits.” -Home Depot spokesperson.
Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts.
Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW
©2025 Cox Media Group
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/XCUXZC2XYZHCRGNNGKFEX6U3LQ.png)
