The New York City Council Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection, chaired by Harvey D. Epstein, held a hearing on June 17, 2026, primarily to discuss two legislative proposals: Int. No. 0891 (prohibiting surveillance pricing) and Int. No. 0892 (restricting grocery price increases to once per 24-hour period). The committee also briefly addressed Int. No. 0813 (tobacco retail dealer licensing related to cannabis law), which was laid over. The hearing featured testimony from Commissioner Sam Levine of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), representatives from the New York State Attorney General's office, labor unions, industry groups, and privacy advocates. Key themes included the need to protect consumers from opaque, data-driven pricing while preserving legitimate discounts and loyalty programs, as well as enforcement challenges and the importance of coordination with state law.
Good morning, good morning. Welcome to the New York City Council hearing on the Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection. At this time, please silence all electronics and do not approach the days. Again, please do not approach the days. If you're testifying or have any other questions or concerns, please contact the Sergeant at Arms. Thank you for your cooperation. Chairs, you may begin. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Oh yeah, we got them. Thank you for joining the legislative hearing today and the council's consumer worker protection on introduction to $891 and $892. I want to thank the majority leader and the speaker for and for advancing this legislation. I'm going to recognize my colleagues who are here. And on Zoom, it is Ariola. And Councilmember Hanks was here, but I think she's going to be coming back. And I'd like to be able to turn it over to the speaker for our opening statement. Great. Thank you so much. I first of all want to thank Chair Epstein for holding today's hearing. I'm Julie Menon, Speaker of the New York City Council. I want to thank the administration for testifying today. I'm here today to discuss a bill in relation to prohibiting surveillance pricing, and it's also one that I'm proud to sponsor. That's introduction eight nine one, and also proud to support introduction eight nine two, sponsored by majority leader Sean Abreu in relation to restricting the frequency of price increases in grocery stores. So first of all, I want to start by defining some of these terms because I think this will be useful. Surveillance pricing is a practice of setting a price that utilizes a consumer's personal data collected through surveillance technology. The price fee or discount that is set for one consumer or group of consumers may differ from the price fee or discount that is set for another consumer or group of consumers based on that utilization of personal data. This personal data can be gathered, it can be purchased, or it can be acquired from a third party. Dynamic pricing is the practice of changing the price for a consumer good or service literally in real time, sometimes instantaneously, sometimes multiple times a day. In light of advancements in technology, which should be utilized to benefit consumers, many shoppers are noticing troubling trends. For example, perhaps someone searches online for the perfect NYX jersey to wear to the parade tomorrow. Or another example, many New Yorkers have had the experience where they're leaving a bar after a night out, and a group of roommates all order a four-hire vehicle at the exact same time, only to discover that each one of them is quoted a different price to be taken on the exact same route. Or perhaps most troubling at all, there's now technology that supermarkets could potentially utilize where if you place a bunch of bananas listed at three dollars into your carts after you get to the checkout counter, that price is now scanning at seven dollars for those bananas. New Yorkers should be protected from this type of price inconsistency and unpredictability, and more importantly, they deserve to understand how and why it's happening. In our research, and I want to be clear, we sent investigators out to look at this issue. In our research, the council has discovered the following examples of surveillance and dynamic pricing. This is by the way, not an exhaustive list. I'm just going to list some of the examples we found. Major grocery chains are beginning to roll out digital shelf labels that enable stores to easily update prices. Grocery stores that have implemented them report that they can change a price of items up to 2,000 times per day. Investigations have found that major chain retailers set different prices based on consumers' proximity to their store or competitor's store, with the price of a television at one store increasing from $499.99 to $599.99 cents when the consumer pulled into the store's parking lot. A behavioral economist who worked at a ride share company revealed that the application increases prices when a consumer's phone battery is low because they might not be otherwise be able to get home if they don't accept the high offer. An outside investigation published in December 2025 found that a grocery delivery platform was engaging in algorithmic pricing experiments that resulted in consumers paying different prices for the same products from the same store at the same time with price differences as high as 23% for certain products. On April 18th, an Airlines X account suggested a customer try clearing their account and their cookies or booking with an incognito window after the customer complained about a $230 increase in their ticket price within one day, indicating that the company is using personal browsing data to set flight prices. And finally, from our own investigation that we did, using 10 different ride share accounts to conduct approximately 370 pricing checks that our investigators did across three standard routes. Our investigation found consistent variation in discounts across accounts. Some accounts repeatedly received automatically applied discounts that other accounts viewing the same route at the same moment did not, so that otherwise identical riders were quoted different final prices. At least one account received no discounts at all over 370 pricing checks. These examples should concern all of us. It is crucial that government acts now to prevent this predatory behavior from becoming any more common. And I just want to say, as somebody practiced consumer protection law for a very long time, the issue with dynamic and surveillance pricing is it's insidious.