The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday ordered nine companies to explain how they use personal data to set the prices people pay and the pay that gig workers receive. The orders went to Delta, United, JetBlue, Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, Target and Walmart. Each company has 45 days from the date it receives the order to respond.
Nothing in the order alleges that any of the nine broke a law. It is a demand for documents, part of a study the commission approved 2 to 0, and the questions it asks are about method: which inputs go into a price, which tools adjust it, and how a company decides what a particular customer or driver is offered. The answers will be filed with the government whether or not they show anything wrong.
The orders ask for the arithmetic, not a confession
Section 6(b) of the FTC Act lets the commission conduct wide-ranging studies that do not have a specific law enforcement purpose. That is the authority the agency used. The five commissioners did not need to find a violation, and they did not assert one. If a company fails to turn over the required information, the commission can ask a federal court to compel compliance.
The orders ask the recipients to document the inputs, tools and procedures they use to adjust or set both prices and compensation. The subject is not only what a customer pays at checkout. It includes whether a ride or delivery offer changes from one worker to the next based on data the company holds about that worker.
Chairman Andrew Ferguson framed the inquiry around opacity. He said the agency intends to scrutinize the methods companies may be using to determine how much consumers pay, or how much gig workers are paid, for the same product or service, and that consumers deserve to know whether browsing habits or other personal data are used to estimate the highest price a person will accept.
The calendar matters. Forty-five days from receipt puts most responses in mid-December, after the congressional elections on November 3. The commission can publish a study whenever it finishes reviewing them, and a public report is the usual endpoint for a 6(b) inquiry.
Nine companies, three kinds of business
The list crosses industries that price very differently. Delta, United and JetBlue sell seats through fare systems that change by the minute. Lyft, Uber, DoorDash and Instacart match riders and drivers, or customers and couriers, through app-based offers. Target and Walmart sell goods at posted prices, with loyalty programs and apps that track what customers buy.
The common thread in the orders is whether the price of the same thing varies from one person to the next because of data about that person. The commission's release names loyalty program participation and analysis of personal data among the factors it wants companies to explain.
The inquiry lands as pricing software has become more capable. Tools that incorporate artificial intelligence can test how much a shopper will tolerate, and the Reuters report on the orders notes that the technology has fueled concern about prices set for each shopper individually to extract the maximum that person will pay. That concern is difficult to verify from outside, because personalized pricing serves different prices to different people and leaves no public price list to compare against.
Two recipients preemptively denied the practice. JetBlue said it does not use personal information or web browsing history to set individual pricing, and that fares are determined by demand and seat availability with all customers seeing the same fares on its website and app. Delta said it has no tolerance for discriminatory or predatory pricing and complies with applicable privacy, pricing and advertising laws. The other seven did not comment in the initial coverage.
A denial is not the end of the inquiry. The orders ask for records, and records can show a practice that a customer cannot see, because personalized pricing by design gives different people different prices. That is what makes the study useful to the agency and hard for the rest of us to check.
The last study looked at the middlemen
The commission ran a study on personalized pricing in mid-2024 and released staff findings days before President Trump took office. That study examined consultancies that advise retailers, not the businesses that set prices for their own customers. The agency says it learned nothing about actual pricing decisions from it, and it describes the new orders as a correction that goes directly to companies that may be personalizing prices.
The gap was real. Pricing consultants can describe what tools exist, but only the company holding the customer data knows which signals it feeds into a price and how much weight each one gets. A study aimed at the firms that make the decision can see the machinery. A study aimed at their vendors cannot.
The commission also has an interest in the wage side that its earlier work did not reach. Airlines typically pay employees a salary or a fixed hourly wage. Ride-hailing and delivery companies can pay shifting offers based on formulas the worker does not see, and the commission's release suggests phone usage and acceptance history for past offers as possible inputs. A driver who declines an offer may be shaping the next one without knowing it.
The commission has already conceded the limits of its authority
In August the commission proposed an enforcement policy statement describing how undisclosed use of personal information to set a price unique to a consumer could violate the FTC Act. The comment window closed September 25 with roughly 3,700 comments, and hundreds of those commenters urged the agency to ban the practice outright.
The commission has said it does not have authority for a blanket prohibition. That concession shapes everything that follows. A proposed policy statement can describe when a practice is unfair or deceptive, and case-by-case enforcement can punish it, but neither amounts to a rule that personalized pricing is illegal in general.
Ferguson has said personalizing prices could violate consumer protection law where consumers do not expect it, and that companies should expect enforcement in those cases. The study supplies the facts that kind of case would need. It also gives the commission something to point to when it argues that its narrower authority is enough.
States have moved where the federal agency says it cannot. Maryland's ban took effect on October 1. New Jersey and Connecticut have laws scheduled to take effect in 2027. The National Retail Federation has criticized those laws and defended data-driven discounts as a way to reward loyalty.
The industry argument is not frivolous. A loyalty discount and a personalized price can be the same mechanism viewed from different ends: both use data about a customer to change what that customer pays. The policy question is where a reward for repeat business becomes a charge based on what a company thinks a person will tolerate. The FTC's study asks companies to describe their methods, which is the factual predicate for drawing that line.
Gig pay is the quieter half
Most of the public argument about personalized pricing concerns shoppers. The orders give equal space to workers. Ride-sharing and food-delivery companies may pay different amounts for similar work based on opaque formulas, and the commission wants the inputs, tools and procedures behind those offers.
This is a different harm from a higher price at checkout. A customer who pays more can compare notes with a friend and discover the difference. A driver who is offered less for the same trip may never learn that another driver was offered more, because the offers arrive separately and the formula is not disclosed.
The commission has paired the inquiry with its broader labor enforcement. Its Labor Task Force has pursued businesses that mislead workers with false earnings claims. The pricing study extends the same interest in what workers are told, and what they are not, to the algorithms that set their pay.
Whether the practice is widespread is exactly what the study is meant to establish. The orders are requests for information, and the companies will answer them with data that either shows personalized compensation or shows something more uniform. Either result adds to a record that does not exist today.
The pairing of prices and pay in one inquiry is itself a statement. A company that personalizes both is running one data operation with two revenue effects: it can charge a customer more and pay a worker less for the same transaction. Regulators have generally looked at those questions separately, through consumer protection on one side and labor law on the other. The orders put them in the same file.
A record is not a rule, but it is a lever
The most likely product of the inquiry is a public report. Such a report can inform regulators and lawmakers, as the commission has said, and it can supply the factual basis for enforcement under the FTC Act where a company's pricing departs from what consumers expect.
That is a narrower tool than a ban, and its reach depends on facts the study has not yet gathered. A report can also be cited by state legislators considering their own bills, and by plaintiffs in private litigation, which gives the document a life beyond the commission that wrote it.
The orders carry political weight too. They arrived a week before an election in which the cost of living ranks among the top concerns for voters, according to Reuters. Both parties have spent years competing over hidden fees and surprise charges, and an inquiry into whether companies charge different people different prices fits that theme without requiring the agency to prove a single case.
For the nine companies, the practical task is documentary. They must explain their pricing and pay systems to a regulator that has said it lacks the power to outlaw the practice but retains the power to investigate it, publish what it finds and bring cases where the facts support one. The 45-day clock runs past the election, and the record will still be there when the campaign is over.
Primary sources
- Federal Trade Commission, press release on the Section 6(b) orders to nine companies, October 28, 2026. ftc.gov
- Reuters, report on the orders and the commission's authority, published by the New York Post on October 28, 2026. nypost.com