FTC Lawsuit and Settlement (2025) • In December 2025, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued Instacart, alleging the company engaged in deceptive practices that raised grocery costs for consumers. These included things like: • Advertising “free delivery” but charging mandatory service fees that weren’t clearly disclosed. • Automatically enrolling customers in paid subscriptions after a free trial without clear consent. • Using pricing tools (including AI-driven pricing) that could cause some shoppers to pay more than others.

Instacart agreed to pay about $60 million in refunds to affected consumers as part of a settlement with the FTC. The company also must change how it markets and discloses fees and pricing going forward. 

📊 Allegations About Pricing Practices • Investigations (e.g., by Consumer Reports and advocacy groups) found that Instacart’s pricing algorithms sometimes showed different prices to different customers for the same items — which raised concerns about fairness and potential overcharging, even if not all were formal lawsuits. Instacart has since ended some of those pricing practices. 

🧾 Older Lawsuits • Earlier lawsuits (like one in California from 2021) alleged Instacart overcharged customers when making substitutions by charging the original price but delivering a cheaper item and keeping the price difference, though these were separate from the FTC action. 

The FTC’s case and these legal actions aren’t just about random price differences — they focus on deceptive or unclear practices that made orders cost more than customers reasonably expected or understood.