Why Your Price Isn’t My Price

_{Hi friends,}

_{This week, we’re looking at a growing problem that quietly affects all of us when we shop for anything: clothes, flights, even groceries.}

_{Maybe you’ve seen it online: you check a price, come back later… and it’s higher. Same item. Same site. Just more expensive the second time around.}

_{Welcome to the world of dynamic pricing, surveillance pricing and AI pricing.}

_{You’re not imagining it. That’s not inflation. That’s not demand. That’s you being watched. Your location. Your clicks. Your battery level. Even how long you hovered on a product.}

_{Pricing isn’t just dynamic, it’s now personal and individualized. AI systems can now adjust what we pay based on our behavior, urgency, and even emotional state. And it’s raising serious ethical questions.}

_{Let’s say you’re booking a last-minute flight for a funeral. You’re not comparing fares. You’re grieving and just need to get there.}

_{But the system can potentially see your late-night searches, your visits to an obituary page, and quietly raises the price. And not because the flight is full, but because it knows you’ll say yes?}

_{This scenario was raised in a Reuters article by David Shepardson, where lawmakers expressed concern that airlines could use AI, personal data, or consumers’ internet activity to pinpoint when someone is likely to travel (especially in emotionally vulnerable moments) and hike prices accordingly.}

_{It may sound hypothetical. But the technology exists. And we are well on our way.}

_{This isn’t business responding to a free market. It’s a dishonest scale. One that locks the consumer in a hyper-personalized pricing silo built from their own data.}

_{We’re already seeing signs:}

_{Uber: Investigators allegedly found that users with low phone batteries were quoted higher fares for the same ride. The assumption? A dying phone means urgency and that you’re more likely to book quickly without comparing.}

<sub>Target: Shoppers claim they were charged up to $100 more for certain items simply because they were in the store’s parking lot. CA district attorneys alleged that the Target app used geofencing to detect location and raise prices accordingly. Target denied wrongdoing.

REMA 1000 (Norway): This grocery chain uses digital shelf labels that can change prices up to 100x a day. So what happens when stores know seniors come in every Tuesday from 1 to 3 p.m.? Could prices quietly rise on prune juice, OTC medicines and other essentials? The potential for abuse is real.</sub>

_{Start around the 16:00 mark if you want to jump straight to this story. Listen.}

_{Have a blessed week,}

_Devin