Nine companies received Section 6(b) special orders on Oct. 28 requiring written answers on whether personal data shapes what customers pay: Delta, United, JetBlue, Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, Target and Walmart. The orders also reach worker compensation, asking the ride-sharing and delivery firms to document how driver pay is set. The Commission approved them on a 2-0 vote.
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Airlines, ride-hailing apps, delivery platforms and two big retailers make an unusual group for a single inquiry. The orders cover tickets, rides, grocery and meal deliveries and other products, and they set a 45-day clock for responses, which leaves a window of roughly six weeks before the first answers are due.
The nine recipients and the 6(b) mechanism
The Federal Trade Commission’s announcement of the inquiry names all nine recipients and describes the group as airlines, ride-sharing and food-delivery firms, though Target and Walmart are retailers. The tool it used is Section 6(b) of the FTC Act, which, according to the agency’s enforcement-authority page, lets the Commission require reports or written answers to specific questions about an entity’s business and practices.
A 6(b) order is a study instrument, not a lawsuit. Recipients can petition to limit or quash the order, and the Commission can ask a federal court to enforce it if a company does not comply. Under Section 6(f) the agency can make parts of what it collects public when that serves the public interest, which is how earlier 6(b) work, such as its 2016 report on patent assertion entities, reached readers.
Price variation and driver pay in the orders
For prices, the Commission wants information showing whether what a customer pays for a ticket, ride, delivery or other product varies from one person to the next, including through loyalty-program participation or algorithmic analysis of personal data. For pay, ride-sharing and food-delivery companies must hand over the inputs, tools and procedures used to set or adjust driver compensation, which the release says may depend on data such as phone usage or the history of accepting past offers.
Chairman Andrew Ferguson framed both halves as questions of disclosure. He said consumers deserve to know whether companies use their web surfing habits to set prices, and that workers likewise deserve to know if their compensation is affected by how companies use their personal data. He also said the agency will scrutinize the “opaque methodology” some firms in these industries may be using.
Denials already on the record from the companies
The Associated Press, in a report carried by News4Jax, collected responses from several recipients. Delta said it has “zero tolerance for discriminatory or predatory pricing” and denied using any fare product that targets individual customers with offers based on personal data. JetBlue said it does not use personal information or browsing history for individual prices and that fares reflect demand and seat availability. Walmart’s chief executive said a month earlier that the retailer does not use income, shopping history or willingness to pay to set prices, and will not.
Instacart said shopper pay rests only on job-related criteria such as distance, item count and expected shopping time, and that retailers, not the company, set prices on its site. Target said in a website post that it does not use personal information to raise prices based on who customers are, where they live or when they shop. The Record carried no company responses at all, and the AP report included none from United, Lyft or DoorDash.
The 2024 study and the August policy statement
The orders follow an earlier effort that the FTC now treats as a miss. The 2024 personalized-pricing study examined middlemen consultancies rather than the companies that set prices, and the agency says it learned nothing about actual pricing decisions. Ferguson, then a commissioner, concurred in that study on July 23, 2024 in a written statement arguing that such general investigations exist to reveal rather than to remedy, and that technology moves faster than government. He also called the term surveillance pricing an unfortunate exercise in question begging.
The Record adds that the 2024 effort targeted eight companies and that Lina Khan, then the outgoing chair, released preliminary findings days before leaving in January 2025. Ferguson later objected to that release, closed the probe and said he would not disclose the full findings. Among the firms that had supplied information for it were McKinsey & Co., Accenture and Revionics, which is the middleman structure the new orders are built to bypass by going to the companies directly.
In August the Commission sought public comment on a proposed enforcement policy statement about undisclosed use of personal information to set individualized prices. The open question is timing: if each company received its order on the day of the release, 45 days would run out on Dec. 12, but the release counts from receipt, and any extension or petition to quash would push the first public look at the answers later still.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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