Seattle City Council votes to ban surveillance pricing in grocery sales

Seattle's City Council voted to pass the Fair Pricing and Transparency Act (CB 121267), legislation that would prohibit personalized pricing in the sale of groceries. Consumer Reports supported the bill, provided technical assistance to the Mayor's office during the policy's development and testified in its favour. The measure now goes to Mayor Wilson for her signature.

If signed, Seattle would become the first city in the United States to prohibit the tactic, often described as surveillance pricing.

What the bill would prohibit

The legislation would bar companies from using a shopper's personal data to change the price they see for groceries and other essential items. That data includes web-browsing history, real-time location, and inferences about a consumer's income, family size, health conditions and more.

The bill still permits a wide array of discounts, while requiring greater transparency around them and placing some limits on how consumers can be profiled.

"The price you see shouldn't be different based on who you are"

"Nobody should pay more for basic necessities because a data broker is quietly collecting information about what they're searching for online, what they hover over, what their income is, or where they go," said Grace Gedye, a senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports. She said the Mayor and the City Council had made Seattle a leader on protecting shoppers from unfair grocery pricing tactics.

The investigations behind the push

Consumer Reports' own research has documented the practice. In May 2025, the organisation examined Kroger's consumer data practices and found the retailer was collecting vast profiles of individual shoppers, including inferences about their income, family size, education level and gender. One shopper who requested their data under a state privacy law received a 62-page profile.

In December 2025, CR, together with Groundwork Collaborative and More Perfect Union, published an investigation into Instacart's pricing. Nearly 400 consumers shopped for the same basket of goods at the same time; the data showed they were quoted different prices for the same products from the same store. The analysis found differences as high as 23% for certain products, a gap that could cost families more than $1,200 a year at checkout. Soon afterwards, Instacart said it would end the programme, though it told CR that grocery retailers and food brands could still test promotions on the platform.

Separately, CR's investigation of Uber and Lyft found the companies routinely charge different customers significantly different prices for the same rides ordered at roughly the same time, and that both apps advertised discounts off inflated original prices.

States acted first

Maryland, Connecticut and New Jersey have already signed laws banning surveillance pricing. Seattle's ordinance would be the first adopted at the city level.