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The popular delivery app has publicly been accused of surveillance pricing and hidden fees. In fact, Groundwork Collaborative president and CEO Lindsay Owens, testified in an August 2026 Senate hearing which exposed a now-abandoned patent.
Alex Jacquez, a former aide to Mr. Biden now serving as senior vice president of policy, advocacy and research at Groundwork Action, a liberal group, said the "conundrum" facing Mr. Trump this November bore some resemblance to the forces that swept Democrats out of power last time.
And candy prices are up 15.3% over last year, according to data from Groundwork Collaborative and Century Foundation, which also looked at how individual candy brands have become more expensive.
Instacart is one of the companies receiving an FTC order. Separately, Consumer Reports, Groundwork Collaborative and More Perfect Union tested the prices shoppers saw on Instacart. Their findings offer background on price variation on the platform, but they do not establish that the other eight companies named by the FTC use personalized pricing.
However, according to consumer card data , DoorDash already commands a shocking 59 percent of the U.S. delivery market, and Instacart 18 percent, giving the combined company control of more than three quarters of every delivery dollar spent. Lindsey Owens, president and CEO of the Groundwork Collaborative and expert in dynamic and surveillance pricing, has called on federal regulators to block the acquisition.
The advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative has slammed the practice as unfair and predatory. In a months-long investigation last year, the group found that identical grocery items on Instacart could differ in price by as much as 23% from one customer to the next.
In 2025, Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports and More Perfect Union conducted a live test across four cities: Hundreds of shoppers simultaneously added items from a specific grocery store to their Instacart shopping carts.
Last year, the FTC said it was looking into Instacart's practice of running price experiments that a study found resulted in some shoppers paying more than others for the same items ordered from the same store at the same time. Instacart ended the practice following criticism after the study by Consumer Reports and Groundwork Collaborative, an economic think tank.
“It’s almost infuriating that we don’t have somebody helming a consumer movement in this country given how central these issues are to the national conversation,” said Lindsay Owens, the president of Groundwork Collaborative, a Washington research and policy group pushing new laws to curb algorithmic pricing and other pro-consumer moves.
Lindsay Owens, president and CEO of Groundwork Collaborative and author of the book Gouged: The End of a Fair Price—and What That Means for Your Wallet, told Gizmodo in a statement Wednesday that she supports the FTC’s inquiries.