Seattle City Council votes to ban surveillance pricing in sale of groceries
Seattle City Council votes to ban surveillance pricing in sale of groceries
西雅图市议会投票禁止在食品销售中使用“监控定价”
September 22, 2026 2026年9月22日
If signed, Seattle will become the first city in the nation to prohibit the pricing tactic. 如果该法案获得签署，西雅图将成为全美首个禁止此类定价策略的城市。
Seattle, Washington – The Seattle City Council today passed the Fair Pricing and Transparency Act (CB 121267), groundbreaking legislation supported by Consumer Reports that would prohibit personalized pricing in the sale of groceries. Consumer Reports provided technical assistance to the Mayor’s office throughout the policy development process, testified, and recently submitted a letter in support of the legislation. The bill now heads to Mayor Wilson for her signature. 华盛顿州西雅图市——西雅图市议会今日通过了《公平定价与透明度法案》（CB 121267）。这项由《消费者报告》（Consumer Reports）支持的开创性立法，旨在禁止在食品销售中使用个性化定价。《消费者报告》在整个政策制定过程中为市长办公室提供了技术支持，参与了听证会，并于近期提交了支持该法案的信函。目前，该法案已提交至威尔逊市长（Mayor Wilson）处等待签署。
This bill, which is the first of its kind to pass at the city level, would prohibit the use of a consumer’s personal data to change the price they see for groceries and other essential items. This includes, for example, data about a consumer’s web-browsing history, their realtime location, inferences about their income, family size, health conditions, and more. The bill also permits a vast array of discounting practices while requiring increased transparency around discounts and placing some limitations on how consumers can be profiled. 该法案是全美首个在城市层面通过的此类立法，它将禁止利用消费者的个人数据来更改其看到的食品及其他必需品的价格。这包括消费者的网页浏览记录、实时位置、对其收入、家庭规模、健康状况的推断等数据。该法案在允许各类折扣行为的同时，要求提高折扣的透明度，并对如何对消费者进行画像设定了限制。
“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, senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports. “The price you see shouldn’t be different based on who you are. Mayor Wilson and the City Council have made Seattle a leader on protecting shoppers from unfair grocery pricing tactics with this bill. We commend this work.” “任何人都不应因为数据经纪人悄悄收集了他们的在线搜索内容、浏览停留记录、收入水平或行踪，而为基本生活必需品支付更多费用，”《消费者报告》高级政策分析师格蕾丝·格迪（Grace Gedye）表示，“你看到的价格不应因你的身份而异。威尔逊市长和市议会通过这项法案，使西雅图在保护消费者免受不公平食品定价策略侵害方面处于领先地位。我们对这一举措表示赞赏。”
Background: 背景：
Other states have taken action to sign bills into law to ban the practice of surveillance pricing, including Maryland, Connecticut and New Jersey. In May 2025, Consumer Reports 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. 其他州也已采取行动，通过立法禁止“监控定价”行为，包括马里兰州、康涅狄格州和新泽西州。2025年5月，《消费者报告》调查了克罗格（Kroger）的消费者数据处理方式，发现该公司正在为个人购物者收集庞大的数据档案，并推断出他们的收入、家庭规模、教育程度、性别等信息。一名根据州隐私法要求获取其数据的购物者，最终收到了一份长达62页的个人档案。
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 quoted 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. 2025年12月，《消费者报告》（CR）与合作伙伴Groundwork Collaborative及More Perfect Union联合发布了一项关于Instacart定价策略的调查。CR组织了近400名消费者在同一时间购买同一篮子商品。对购物数据的分析发现，消费者在同一时间从同一家商店购买相同产品时，被报出了不同的价格。调查发现，Instacart的算法定价实验可能导致某些产品的价格差异高达23%，并可能使家庭每年在结账时多支出超过1200美元。
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. 此后不久，Instacart在公司博客中宣布，将终止导致不同购物者在平台上看到不同食品价格的项目。然而，Instacart向CR表示，它仍将允许其合作伙伴（食品零售商和食品品牌）通过该平台向客户测试不同类型的促销和折扣。
CR’s most recent investigation of Uber and Lyft’s AI-driven pricing tactics found that the companies routinely charge different customers significantly different prices for the same rides ordered at roughly the same time. CR also found that both apps regularly advertised supposed discounts off what appeared to be inflated original prices. (Note: CR defines “same rides” as trips from the same starting point to the same destination priced within minutes—and often seconds—of one another.) CR最近对Uber和Lyft人工智能驱动的定价策略进行的调查发现，这两家公司经常对在几乎同一时间预订相同行程的不同客户收取差异巨大的费用。CR还发现，这两个应用程序经常在看似虚高的原始价格基础上宣传所谓的折扣。（注：CR将“相同行程”定义为从同一起点到同一终点，且定价时间间隔在几分钟内——通常在几秒钟内——的行程。）