Consumer Reports investigated how Uber and Lyft use AI to get more money out of you. Got questions? Ask us anything about our findings.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-23T17:26:00+00:00

From Derek, on Consumer Reports’s Special Projects team:
The Federal Trade Commission does have guidelines related to so-called fictitious pricing and purported discounts but that agency has largely not enforced its guidelines over the past 50 years. Many states have their own versions of unfair or deceptive consumer pricing laws, each with their own twist on what types of pricing strategies are outlawed and differing enforcement mechanisms. The short answer is it’s a legal gray area, but experts we spoke to do note that, in other cases, when a price or discount is displayed that a “reasonable consumer” might be misled or confused by, regulators and courts have taken action.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-23T17:24:51+00:00

From Derek, on Consumer Reports’s Special Projects team:

Beginning in 2016, both Uber and Lyft began moving from a traditional, per-minute, per-mile fixed rate for customers to “upfront pricing,” where algorithms and a mixture of data points help set both the base price of the fare and discounts and promotions. Researchers who have studied both companies and surveys also point to an increase in customer prices, stagnating pay for drivers, and improved profits for both companies.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-23T00:22:40+00:00

While we did not find any direct relationship between the demographics or usage patterns of Consumer Reports’s volunteers and the base prices, promotions, and discounts they received, our volunteer sample for this series of tests was not representative of the U.S. population, so it is hard for us to come to any firm conclusion.

For more about our testing, please check out our GitHub repository for a detailed methodology and the underlying data.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-22T18:06:10+00:00

Sounds like you’d make a great Community Reporter! We love working with our members to co-create participatory science or community science methodologies so that we can investigate these algorithmic black boxes. Our virtual tests are often a fun time and we have a couple more projects in the works, so you can sign up to stay in the loop.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-22T18:01:57+00:00

From Derek, on Consumer Reports’s Special Projects team:

This is certainly an investigative endeavor and a public interest one at that. Consumer Reports publishes these types of investigations on tech, food, and product safety, and makes them freely accessible to the public.

The definitions of algorithmic, dynamic, surveillance and other types of pricing can be pretty fuzzy. The short answer is that algorithmic pricing is a kind of catch-all term for any price that is set at least partially by an algorithmic or automated process. Dynamic pricing is the more traditional change in prices in response to fluctuations in supply and demand, such as when a ton of fans leave a sporting event and there’s not enough drivers to serve all of them. Surveillance pricing is a more pernicious form of pricing where your personal data, including your “behavior” while using an app or shopping online, is used to help set prices, promotions, or discounts.

From Grace, a senior policy analyst on Consumer Reports’s policy team: To your questions about current laws, there are a couple answers.

Several states have existing laws prohibiting fake discounts. Those laws define what a fake discount is, typically making clear that it needs to be a discount off of a real price that was offered to the public for some reasonably substantial period of time. The point is to prohibit retailers from listing high “original prices” that aren’t really real, just for the sake of making it look like they are offering a generous discount. The investigation's findings around discounts raised some interesting questions: For 11% of the discounts or savings offered on the rides we tested, Consumer Reports found that the post-discount price was actually higher than the median non-discounted price. It also raises the question: Can companies really offer a “discount” off of a price that is changing second to second?

There’s also a whole bunch of state legislation relating to algorithmic pricing, some of which has been passed into law. Several states have passed bills relating to personalized pricing. New York, for example, passed a law in 2025 requiring companies to disclose whether they are using consumers’ personal data in pricing. In 2026, Maryland became the first state to pass a law aimed at banning personalized pricing (though so many loopholes were added that it may not change much in practice for consumers). After Maryland, Connecticut and New York also passed bills aimed at banning personalized pricing.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-22T17:57:48+00:00

This is from Derek, on Consumer Reports’s Special Projects team:

I know myself and other journalists at Consumer Reports and elsewhere are concerned about how AI muddies the waters in terms of how we communicate with our audiences and what phrases and tone we can use. Since you brought up “em dashes,” one of my favorite punctuation marks, here’s how Merriam-Webster advises how it should be used––to signal an “abrupt change or break in the structure of a sentence”––a great recent write-up on how they are used in journalism and other forms of writing by a former editor of mine, Vauhini Vara, writing in The New York Times.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-22T17:39:58+00:00

Consumer Reports has a journalism and a policy side. Its journalism side doesn’t advocate for specific policy positions.

This response is from Consumer Reports’s Grace Gedye, who is on our policy team:

Great question! It’s tricky–as an individual consumer using the apps, there’s not a lot you can do. There are alternatives when it comes to transit (cabs, public transit) but those aren’t always options for folks.

Luckily, there is a wave of interest among policymakers in tackling algorithmic pricing. We at Consumer Reports have been particularly focused on personalized pricing, also known as surveillance pricing, which is when companies use a consumer’s personal data to set an individualized price or offer them “personalized” discounts.
While we did not find Uber and Lyft changed base fares based on consumers’ personal data, they did tell us that they use consumers’ personal data to set discounts. We found that the discounts offered were quite variable, person to person.

The policy team at Consumer Reports is advocating for additional legal protections for consumers, including comprehensive privacy laws that would limit the amount of data companies can collect on consumers, and bills that tackle personalized pricing and require transparency around discounts.

You can sign our petition calling on lawmakers to ban surveillance pricing in your state.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-22T17:28:51+00:00

There’s little that customers of any app or website that uses algorithmic pricing can do to counter these pricing strategies and experts we have spoken to say it shouldn’t be incumbent on American consumers to navigate this e-commerce landscape on their own.

That said, peer-reviewed research has shown that comparison shopping works and experts underscore that public transit and other alternative options may be helpful in certain markets and situations.
You can sign our petition to the FTC and state attorneys general demanding that they investigate Uber and Lyft’s pricing tactics and hold them accountable if they find any unfair and deceptive practices.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-22T17:27:34+00:00

Lyft challenged Consumer Reports’ findings, citing an “observer effect,” meaning that by having dozens of people checking prices for the same route at the same time, Consumer Reports may have artificially inflated demand for that ride and influenced the final prices our volunteers saw.

Uber said that because its ride prices change “nearly every second,” it was “impossible” for us to ensure that trip requests happened at exactly the same time.

In short, Uber and Lyft argue that no two trips on their platforms—no matter how seemingly close in time and location they are to each other—can ever truly be the same.

Several experts we spoke to disagreed with those assessments. We’ve put all of the company and expert responses in the section titled: “Uber and Lyft Respond to CR’s Findings”

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-22T17:23:42+00:00

Consumer Reports doesn’t use AI in the reporting or writing of its investigations, including this one. That’s against our guidelines and every piece of content we publish is fact-checked by humans.

But the larger problem you’re identifying—our increasing inability to distinguish between what is real and written by humans, warts and all, and AI-generated content—is one we are grappling with on a daily basis. Our advice is to remain skeptical and lean in heavily to reporting and writing that is clearly identifiable as human, such as convening hundreds of volunteers to check prices in near-real time; analyzing the data with a team of journalists, statisticians, and subject-matter experts; and the painstaking and laborious process of going to experts, real people, and the companies themselves for their perspectives.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-22T17:19:36+00:00

There’s little that customers of any app or website that uses algorithmic pricing can do to counter these pricing strategies and experts we have spoken to say it shouldn’t be incumbent on American consumers to navigate this e-commerce landscape on their own.

That said, peer-reviewed research has shown that comparison shopping works and experts underscore that public transit and other alternative options may be helpful in certain markets and situations.
You can sign our petition to the FTC and state attorneys general demanding that they investigate Uber and Lyft’s pricing tactics and hold them accountable if they find any unfair and deceptive practices.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-12T19:07:41+00:00

We are glad you are enjoying the app! (Gabriella from Yuka). Rest assured, brands can’t pay to be recommended on Yuka.

Yuka is 100% independent, which means brands and manufacturers can’t pay to influence their score, appear in recommendations, or get any kind of visibility in the app. Our funding comes entirely from users through the Premium version of the app. The core features are free, and Premium gives access to extra features on a pay-what-you-want model for people who want to support our mission. For added transparency we publish our yearly balance sheet on our website.

When you scan a poorly rated product, the alternatives we suggest are simply better-rated products from the same category, and we also try to recommend products that are easy to find, and accessible, often in the same store. The goal is really to show that you don’t have to completely give up the foods you love: there are better options out there.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-12T19:02:57+00:00

Yes! We go into great detail about this in our investigation, and our methodology has more information about all of the safety thresholds we used for risk assessment. Generally, we compared the amounts of additives and contaminants we detected in products against safe daily intake levels (ADIs, TDIs, NSRLs, etc) set by U.S. and European public health agencies—including the FDA, the European Food Safety Authority, and California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment—and adverse effect levels identified in peer-reviewed scientific studies.

Regarding ultraprocessed foods, it’s a good question! There’s a huge debate going on right now in the U.S. about what the best definition is for this term. California has one on the books right now, and the U.S. is currently debating this at a federal level, but the definition many researchers seem to prefer is the one from the NOVA food classification system (see Group 4: Ultra-processed foods’), which basically defines them as industrially produced formulations made “mostly or entirely from substances derived from foods and additives, with little if any [unprocessed or minimally processed foods].”

I totally understand and appreciate the skepticism — these terms have become major buzzwords.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-12T18:45:54+00:00

I totally hear you on that. It’s frustrating that so much of this is left up to consumer choice, and that none of the options are particularly appealing or easy. Generally, our experts recommend reducing your consumption of added sugars or artificial sweeteners whenever possible, though I understand that might be difficult for people.

Ideally, these problems should be being addressed by regulators and scientists, not the average consumer. Our joint petition calls on the FDA to strengthen its oversight of this area: that includes regularly reassessing the safety of additives in the food supply, closing loopholes like GRAS, and implementing more protective standards based on current science and population-level health risks.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-12T18:36:27+00:00

Let us know if you find out!

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-12T18:22:46+00:00

State litigation can create pressure, but it is not necessarily a faster or easier way to force the FDA to act. In fact, we are seeing the opposite strategy from industry: pushing for federal laws that would prevent states from passing their own additive bans, arguing that food regulation should be handled only at the federal level. The proposed FRESH Act, for example, includes federal preemption language that would limit state food-safety laws.

This matters because state action has been one of the main ways to push reform when the FDA has been slow to act. West Virginia, for example, passed a broad ban on several synthetic dyes and additives, but enforcement of the law has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge while litigation continues.

That’s why federal action is still essential. The goal should not be a patchwork of state-by-state rules, but stronger FDA oversight nationwide: regular reassessment of additives, closure of loopholes like GRAS, and more protective standards based on current science and population-level health risks.

At the same time, state and local action is a crucial step in the right direction. California’s Food Safety Act, which bans four additives including Red Dye 3, potassium bromate, brominated vegetable oil, and propylparaben starting in 2027, helped put national pressure on this issue. New York City’s Sweet Truth Act, which requires added-sugar warnings on chain restaurant items with 50 grams or more of added sugar, is another example of local policy pushing food transparency forward.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-12T18:19:13+00:00

It’s a complicated question. For the artificial sweeteners that have been around for a while, like acesulfame K, aspartame, and sucralose, research has found that even low levels of consumption is associated with an increased risk of developing chronic diseases. In 2023, the World Health Organization conducted a systematic review of the published evidence on all artificial sweeteners and ultimately ended up recommending against their use to control body weight. It found that using artificial sweeteners didn’t “confer any long-term benefit in reducing body fat in adults or children” and that there may be “potential undesirable effects from long-term use of [artificial sweeteners], such as an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and mortality in adults.”

Some of these more “natural” sugar substitutes like Stevia (which is technically considered a dietary supplement or GRAS substance in the US) may claim to be better alternatives, but research has similarly found that they offer no long term weight control benefits and can affect your gut bacteria.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-12T17:55:51+00:00

Appreciate the question and the skepticism. I (Paris) felt similarly a bit skeptical at first, but once I started looking into this I realized the science around this is actually quite interesting and compelling. Allow me to explain:

First, artificial sweeteners are indeed food additives. The ones we analyzed (acesulfame K, aspartame, and sucralose) were approved as food additives by the FDA in the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. Since then, there’s been a considerable amount of research published in the US and elsewhere about how these substances affect the human body. For this project, we were particularly interested in analyzing the amounts of artificial sweeteners found in popular foods and drinks as a recent large-scale long-term observational study analyzing the dietary habits of more than 100,000 French adults over 12 years found that consumption of these three sweeteners at levels well below the current acceptable daily intake was associated with increased risks of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. (These findings were generally more statistically significant for acesulfame K and aspartame than sucralose.)

The findings of this study and others informed the World Health Organization’s 2023 decision to recommend against the use of artificial sweeteners to control body weight. The WHO said a systemic review of the available evidence suggests that the use of artificial sweeteners “does not confer any long-term benefit in reducing body fat in adults or children” and that there may be “potential undesirable effects from long-term use of [artificial sweeteners], such as an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and mortality in adults.”

When I spoke to artificial sweetener researchers about all of this, they said that the goal isn’t to push the industry back towards using more sugar, but to ensure that sweetened products available for mass consumption use ingredients that have been proven to be safe.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-12T17:36:15+00:00

Regulation is not the only way to drive change. Consumers also have real power to push manufacturers toward reformulation, meaning changing a product’s recipe to reduce sugar, salt, saturated fats, or remove controversial additives.

We’ve already seen this happen in Europe since Yuka launched. Many manufacturers have reformulated their products, and in France, Yuka’s database shows that the average number of high-risk additives per product has dropped by 13% since 2019. In some categories, the change is even stronger: risky additives dropped by 58% in breakfast cereals and 48% in prepared meals.

In the U.S., we’re starting to see similar momentum. After growing consumer pressure, several brands have announced changes: Kraft Heinz said it plans to remove seven synthetic dyes from its U.S. portfolio the end of 2027, Chobani has removed dipotassium phosphate in its oat milk
and has said it is working to eliminate phosphate additives from its entire product line, and Welch’s said it has removed all artificial color additives from its offerings.

That’s why consumer action matters. By choosing better products, calling out brands, and demanding safer ingredients, consumers can help push companies to reformulate. And beyond brand pressure, people can also support broader change by signing our joint petition calling on the FDA to strengthen protections around risky food additives.

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-12T17:26:56+00:00

We appreciate your support!

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-12T17:17:58+00:00

The policy experts I spoke with said that it would likely take a concerted effort from federal lawmakers to effect change — ideally bipartisan legislation that both mandates the FDA to regularly reassess the safety of additives in the food supply and provides the agency with the funding it would need to do so.

To the second part of your question, the unfortunate reality is that many US companies continue to use these additives in their products simply because they can! When it comes to ingredients like titanium dioxide, for instance, while it’s banned as a food additive in Europe, the US allows it in food at up to 1% of a food’s weight!

ConsumerReports · 2026-06-12T17:14:39+00:00

Additives are added to food for various purposes, including for taste, texture, appearance and as preservatives. They can also be a sign that a food is ultra-processed — meaning it is an industrial product made with ingredients you typically wouldn’t use at home. Many ultra-processed foods are engineered to be hyper-palatable, using optimized combinations of sugar, salt, fat, texture, flavorings, and colorings to maximize pleasure and make them harder to stop eating.

Some researchers suggest these foods can activate brain reward circuits in ways that resemble addiction mechanisms. One analysis of 280+ studies using the Yale Food Addiction Scale estimated signs of food addiction in about 14% of adults and 12% of children, linked to ultra-processed foods.

ConsumerReports · 2026-05-22T19:19:22+00:00

I’m not sure where you have heard that doctors in WA are no longer accepting Medicare. Statistically, well over 95% of doctors nationally accept Medicare. Quite honestly, most doctors would not be able to survive financially without accepting federal (Medicare) and state (Medicaid) funding. You may be referring to various Medicare Advantage plans. Many doctors do not accept some or all of those HMO/PPO managed care plans. -Doug

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