Lindsay Owens

Surveillance pricing.

Lindsay Owens, the CEO of Groundwork Collaborative, has been highlighting this.

And honestly, it makes me so indignant.

It's incredibly controversial.

Because the rents keep going up and that formula, that math doesn't make sense.

And as I mentioned in some recent podcasts, I'm telling you, this book Gouge by Lindsay Owens just got me so fired up because in 2024, the Department of Justice went after the software company that the landlords were using to collude against renters to price fix rents.

That company's called RealPage, and they've been using AI to share confidential renter information nationwide, landlord to landlord, so all of them could collude like a drug cartel.

And the goal? To keep rents at the maximum prices that you could suffer through.

They have to give them a discount.

Lindsay Owens, a groundwork president and CEO, said in response in DoorDash's proposed acquisition of Instacart that a grocery company that made its fortune running experiments on shoppers to determine how much they can overcharge them, is now merging with a delivery company that built a tech to track its customers every click and scroll to charge them as much as it can.

That's the worst of two worlds.

That's what I say.

So, you know, like I said, surveillance pricing or very personalized pricing as it relates to tech has been a consumer conversation across the industry for months.

This kind of came to a head publicly and nationally in terms of Walmart, mainly because about a month ago, so in September, a consumer rights advocacy group on the left-leaning side of things called Groundwork Collaborative, the CEO, and I believe she is a founder, Lindsay Owens, was releasing a new book of hers that kind of talks about pricing and as it relates to larger corporations and And part of her work and part of Groundwork's work in general has focused on the type of leverage and work potentially being done at places like Walmart.

And just ahead of the book's release, we first see John Ferner, the CEO of Walmart at large, put out a whole statement about how Walmart does not dynamic price and specifically calling out that It doesn't set different prices based on who you are or the time of day.

They say they won't do that in the future.

Well, coming up on the watchdog, I sit down with the consumer watchdog group who got a pointed letter from Walmart after they called the corporation out on some surveillance pricing tactics they don't seem to want the public to know they're using.

have you ever wondered why you pay a different price when you're shopping online than you do when you're in a store or maybe why a certain product is suggested for you when you put something else in your cart big corporations and major retailers are using surveillance pricing tactics to target you and your money now consumer advocate and author lindsay owens is president and ceo of an economic think tank called groundwork collaborative She has a new book out, Gouged, the end of a fair price and what that means for your wallet.

And she's here to reveal what they have exposed.

So first, would you mind telling me about Groundwork Collaborative, what it is and what makes you and your organization so uniquely qualified for this kind of book and this kind of exposure?

Yeah.

So I'm Lindsay Owens.

I'm the president and CEO of Groundwork Collaborative.

We're a think tank based in Washington, D.C. We're also a corporate watchdog.

What do you recommend?

Yeah, so Lindsay Owens, who's the author of a new book called Gouge the End of Fair Price and What That Means for Your Wallet, gave some tips.

But she also said, you know, when it's you against kind of technology, it's tough to do.

Plus, it's also, she acknowledged, it takes a lot of time.