Would it be surprising to find out that the price a person is paying for hamburger at the local grocery store is 10% more than his neighbor is paying when both of them are standing in the same checkout line?
Surveillance pricing uses AI to analyze reams of data including facial recognition, estimated income, shopping history and more to determine what is the absolute most a person will pay for a given item.
Richard Randall, a talk radio host based in Colorado Springs, says Maryland is so concerned about it that state lawmakers are working on a ban.
“A shoutout to Maryland because they're ahead of the curve on this when it comes to consumers. Here in Colorado, I'm looking forward to our legislature enacting something along these lines because it's a horrible threat,” Randall says.
Fox News reports that a shopper at a Kroger in Oregon used a state privacy law to find out how much data was being collected on her. The information revealed that retailers are essentially charging based on guesses that are mostly inaccurate.
“You have a consumer say, ‘Okay, I'm going to file some sort of a claim, and I'd like to see exactly what you have on me,’ and you get back a printout that has more than 60 pages and much of it is not accurate,” Randall says.
One way to tell if a grocery store is using surveillance pricing, he says, is if they have digital price tags on the shelves. Those will change depending on who is standing in front of the item.
“They know that person's willing to pay 5% more, 10% more, because that item means a lot more to them in high demand,” Randall states.
He says Maryland's law, Protection from Predatory Pricing Act, is fairly simple.
“What it says is you can't change your prices. You have to leave a price up for at least a day,” Randall states.
Maryland’s Democrat governor, Wes Moore, is set to sign the law once it passes the state legislature. However, it won’t go into effect until October 1, 2026.
