A new book by Lindsay Owens
The End of a Fair Price – and What That Means for Your Wallet
Available now
Companies like Starbucks are using your loyalty against you.
Loyalty programs can double as sophisticated data-harvesting operations, our @owenslindsay1 warns on @MSNOWNews.
It turns out your loyalty could be costing you more at checkout.
Consumer sentiment for October is the second lowest on record, and consumers just rated current conditions the worst ever.
Consumers' assessment of current economic conditions fell to a record-low 44.7 in today's preliminary University of Michigan survey, down more than 12% from last month and 23.7% from a year ago. Overall consumer sentiment is the second-lowest on record.
October surprise!
Our current consumer protections are built for a bygone era of newspaper coupon inserts, mail-order catalogs, & checkbooks.
Our new Shoppers' Bill of Rights is for today's world: 12 basic protections to protect us from corporations' tricks & games.
“People are starting to call me and say, ‘We’re going to have to call CEOs, instead of, like, hauling Pam Bondi before the committee’” @owenslindsay1 @chafkin
“There’s no one in the country who has done more effective work on pricing than @owenslindsay1." - @SenWarren.
“Lindsay is the person with the time, the training and the resources to make these C-suite guys sweat.”
Walmart and Instacart would have to agree.
I think one of the things that is underpinning so much of the global discontent is the feeling that modern life sucks. It’s the expense, sure. But it’s also the unrelenting barrage of tech that is supposed to make our life better but often feels even more overwhelming. Almost
We investigated Instacart, and what we found was shocking: they were running pricing experiments on shoppers without them even knowing.
But that's just one company. @owenslindsay1's new book, "Gouged," explains companies are using new technologies to reinvent the ripoff.
From McDonald’s to Walmart, companies are allegedly using dynamic pricing to change prices in a nanosecond.
That kind of volatility makes it impossible for families to budget – or know what something will cost from one minute to the next.
@owenslindsay1 on @WGNMorningNews.
“Back-to-school” headlines may be over, but for parents the costs don't end. When we looked at what parents were saying online about back-to-school costs, school lunch was the biggest topic.
My latest to Walmart. To regain trust in a time of economic and technological uncertainty:
Pull back the pending patents.
Relinquish the existing patents.
Get an independent audit of pricing.
Tell shoppers what data Sparky has &how it is safeguarded & used.
Walmart's customers deserve to know if, how, and when their personal data is being used – especially when it comes to pricing. It's time for Walmart to set the record straight.
@owenslindsay1 on @cnn breaks down exactly what Walmart should do to regain their customers' trust.
Walmart continues to deny current or future use of dynamic pricing. But all you have to do is look at their patents.
As @owenslinday1 told @chafkin it's a "company that is hell-bent on trying to make sure you pay the absolute most for each item in your cart.”
McDonald's is just the latest example of companies McRipping Off customers by using AI, which could exacerbate the country’s affordability crisis and make it harder for Americans to bear everyday costs.
@owenslindsay1 in @guardian:
