Consumer Reports calls on Governor Hochul to strengthen and sign the One Fair Price Act
Albany, New York – The New York state legislature passed the One Fair Price Act last night, which Consumer Reports supported. If signed by Governor Hochul, New York will become the third state in the country to pass a law to curb personalized pricing. Earlier in 2026, Maryland and Connecticut passed new laws aimed at banning the practice.
Personalized pricing, also known as surveillance pricing, occurs when companies use consumers’ personal data, such as their browsing history, real-time location, inferred family size, or income to set prices or discounts for consumers.
“If signed, New York’s legislation will help protect consumers from personalized pricing. It will put limits on how companies can use consumers’ data to profile them and charge them the most they are willing to to pay,” said Grace Gedye, senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports. “New York is an expensive place to live. No consumer should have to pay more because a company knows what they’re searching for online, what their income is, the makeup of their household, or where they go. Governor Hochul will no doubt be met with a lot of corporate lobbying to weaken this bill in the months to come. We urge her to stand with New Yorkers and push to strengthen protections, rather than diminish them.”
In particular, Consumer Reports calls on the Governor to enable New Yorkers to protect themselves and take legal action if their rights have been violated, by adding back the law’s private right of action.
Many other states are considering surveillance pricing bans including California, New Jersey, and others. More on Consumer Reports’ campaign to Make the Price Right can be found here.
Consumer Reports recently investigated Kroger’s consumer data practices and found that they were collecting vast data profiles for individual shoppers, with inferences about their income, family size, education level, gender, and more. One shopper who requested their data under a state privacy law received a 62-page profile.
In December 2025, CR, along with partners Groundwork Collaborative and More Perfect Union, published an investigation into Instacart’s pricing tactics. CR had nearly 400 consumers shop for the same basket of goods at the same time. Analysis of the shopping data found that consumers were paying different prices for the same products from the same store at the same time. The investigation found that Instacart’s algorithmic pricing experiments could result in price differences as high as 23% for certain products and could cost families more than $1,200 a year at checkout. Soon after, Instacart announced in a company blog post that it would end the program that resulted in different shoppers being shown different prices for groceries on its platform. However, Instacart told CR that it would still allow its partners—grocery retailers and food brands—to test different types of promotions and discounts on their customers through the platform.
Contact: cyrus.rassool@consumer.org
