It’s Monday, I’m Nithya Sudhir. I collect words, chase patterns, and write about whatever makes me curious.
In September 2000, a DVD collector on DVDTalk.com notices something odd on Amazon, that would go on to spark an uproar.
He had just bought Titus on Amazon for $24.49. Then, out of curiosity, he deletes the cookies and reloads the page to find that the price had dropped to $22.74.
Without the cookies, Amazon saw him as a new customer. And new customers got a better price.
The story spread fast. The Register printed: Amazon makes regular customers pay more.
Charging different buyers different prices wasn't new at the time — airlines had done it for years.
The surprising (and hurtful) bit was that Amazon did it silently.
Amazon, for its part, insisted the test was random. According to the company, it had run a five-day experiment on 68 DVD titles, with discounts ranging from 20% to 40%. Still, Bezos admitted the company had never planned to tell customers. In the end, Amazon refunded 6,896 customers an average of $3.10 each.
Twenty-six years later, prices still aren't the same for everyone. But now regulators are taking notice.
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The FTC put personalized pricing on notice
On August 19, the FTC proposed a new enforcement policy statement on personalized pricing and opened it for public comment.
The statement's logic is simple: Shoppers walk into a store expecting the shelf price to match what everyone else sees. They expect the same online.
When a price quietly changes based on who you are, the FTC says, breaks a reasonable expectation. Staying silent about it likely counts as deception or unfairness under Section 5 of the FTC Act.
Personalized pricing means changing the price for one shopper based on their personal data and what the business thinks they're willing to pay (WTP). If you personalize pricing, then the FTC now wants you to disclose three things to your customer:
Information that the price is personalized
Exactly why
Which data drove it
How real is this threat?
Let's be precise here, because the headlines weren't.
This is not a ban. The FTC lacks the authority to outlaw personalized pricing across the board. So, the statement is not a rule. Its final section also states that it binds neither the FTC nor the public, and the FTC still has to prove a specific law was broken.
But it is a warning shot. A policy statement tells you where enforcement money will go. The comment period closed on September 18, with the FTC voting 2-0 to publish it.
The rules already on the books
Maryland: bans surveillance pricing for large grocers and delivery apps starting this Thursday, October 1. It covers stores of 15,000 square feet or more. Fines reach $25,000 per violation for repeat offenders.
New Jersey: signed a grocery ban on July 23 with penalties up to $50,000 per violation.
Connecticut: goes broadest. From July 1, 2027, retail sellers and delivery services can't use surveillance pricing at all. Anyone else who does must show a label online: "THIS PRICE WAS INCREASED USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA.”
New York: has required a disclosure since November 2025. A full ban, the One Fair Price Act, passed in June. Governor Hochul has until December 31 to act, and observers expect no move before the November election.
Selling into Europe? You're already covered by two rules.
Since May 2022, the EU's Omnibus Directive has required online sellers to tell shoppers when a price was personalized through automated decision-making.
Every advertised discount must be measured against the lowest price of the previous 30 days. A coordinated sweep of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales found 30% of 314 online traders got this wrong.
And more is coming. The Commission plans to table its Digital Fairness Act in Q4 2026. It explicitly targets personalization that exploits consumer vulnerabilities.
Quick poll: Have you ever found out someone paid less than you for the exact same thing?
What unfair pricing looks like to shoppers
Once a shopper learns prices can move based on who they are, they can't un-learn it. Every past purchase becomes a question. Did I overpay then, too?
In fact, in a December 2025 Talker Research survey of 2,000 Americans:
Two out of three said they would stop shopping with a retailer that charged them more because of their data.
Almost half (48%) said they would prefer a store that let them opt out of data-based pricing, even if it meant losing personalized deals.
Here’s the psychology:
Price inequality. Shoppers compare prices three ways: against what they paid last time, against competitors, and against other shoppers. The third comparison stings the most. Haws and Bearden (2006) found that price differences between consumers drive the strongest feelings of unfairness. Later research gave the effect a name: price inequality.
Dual entitlement. Kahneman, Knetsch and Thaler (1986) asked people whether a hardware store could raise snow shovel prices after a blizzard. 82% said no. People accept higher prices when costs rise. They punish higher prices that exploit a buyer's situation. Surveillance pricing does exactly that, by design.
Persuasion Knowledge Model. Friestad and Wright (1994) showed that people learn to recognize persuasion tactics. Once they spot one, they stop evaluating the offer and start evaluating the brand's motives. A hidden price test, once found, turns every future price into a suspect.
What DTC brands can do before Black Friday
Here's the good news. Personalized pricing is mostly a marketplace and platform problem. So, you control your own prices.
Here are some tactics you can apply:
Audit every pricing app in your stack. Ask each vendor what data sets or adjusts prices. Location, device type, browsing history and inferred income are the red flags. Outsourcing pricing doesn't outsource liability.
Know the line. Dynamic pricing reacts to the market: demand, season, stock.
Keep discounts open and opt-in. Connecticut's law protects public discounts, group discounts like students or veterans, and loyalty programs people sign up for.
Never personalize your "compare at" price. Instacart's shifting "original" prices show how fast this looks like manipulation.
Lock your EU reference price now. Black Friday falls on November 27. Your 30-day window opens October 28. The prices you set this month become your evidence.
Assume screenshots. Your Black Friday price will land in group chats next to a friend's. Make sure every screenshot matches.
Say it out loud. Asket publishes the cost breakdown of its garments on product pages. Nobody wonders if a neighbor got a better deal. You don't need to publish your margins. You need one line on your sale page: everyone sees this price.
Here's what I keep coming back to: your shoppers already accept that prices change. Flash sales, seasonal markdowns and early-bird codes all feel fair, because everyone gets the same shot at them.
The line gets crossed when the price changes because of who they are.
Research does suggest that some shoppers win and others lose, and the more sophisticated the pricing, the less likely shoppers benefit.
So while the upside is uncertain, the downside is a customer who never trusts your price tag again.
For a DTC brand, that trade makes no sense. You have a relationship with the customer, which is the whole business.
So if you're tempted to squeeze out every dollar of willingness to pay this Black Friday, run a simple test first.
Imagine two customers comparing your prices in a group chat. If you'd be embarrassed by what they found, don't do it.
How's the depth of today's edition?
Hit reply and tell me: have you ever caught a brand charging you more than someone else? The best stories make it into next week's edition.
See you next week,
Nithya
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