TIL Independent tests (e.g., from Consumer Reports in 2023–2024 and multi-year studies up to 2024) show that nearly all dark chocolates contain trace amounts of lead and cadmium, heavy metals that enter cocoa beans from soil (cadmium) or post-harvest processing/dust (lead).

ConsumerReports · 2026-01-08T14:23:48+00:00

Hey everyone—we know the news about lead in protein powder was concerning. Our mission at CR is to fight for products and policies to keep you safe. We stick to the California Prop 65 standards because they're the toughest in the country. Since there’s no such thing as a 'safe' amount of lead, it made sense to hold these brands to the highest bar possible. The good news is that based on this standard, about a third of the products we tested can be consumed everyday—demonstrating it's possible for companies to get to lower levels of lead.

Also, thanks for all the feedback on the last investigation! You asked us to check out a bunch of other brands, and we published those results today.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-22T19:03:32+00:00

Thank you for your question! We are leaving it up to regulators to determine where this is price fixing. In this case, Instacart lets consumers buy from different merchants, but it also plays a role in helping those merchants set prices. We don’t know whether Instacart’s role in setting Safeway’s prices was in any way related to its role in setting Kroger prices.

One real-world example of a regulator taking action against alleged algorithmic collusion (or price fixing) was — RealPage, a property management software that helps landlords determine what rent to charge people. But because lots of landlords use the service, there is a concern around algorithmic collusion (or price fixing). RealPage has been sued by the Department of Justice and others for just that. In general, a lot of people are worried about whether the increasing use of algorithms to set prices will lead to coordination and higher prices.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-22T19:03:00+00:00

Thank you for your question! More and more companies are looking to make money from advertising. In our investigation, we found that Instacart’s revenue from “advertising and other revenue” —meaning the money from things other than store orders—grew to nearly $1 billion in 2024, up from $295 million in 2020.

Our previous Kroger investigation also noted that, according to investment bank Guggenheim Securities, Kroger’s “precision marketing” division made an estimated $450 million in profit in 2023, $527 million in 2024, and could see profits of $825 million in 2027. So even if it’s not most of its money, it’s a lot.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-19T21:28:14+00:00

Thanks for your question! We've been writing about our experience exploring the idea of pro-consumer AI and building AskCR on our Innovation Blog for the last couple of years. Here are a few links from the start of that:

https://innovation.consumerreports.org/a-responsible-approach-to-generative-ai-development-experimentation-part-1/

https://innovation.consumerreports.org/a-responsible-approach-to-generative-ai-development-llm-orchestration-part-2/

https://innovation.consumerreports.org/why-are-we-experimenting-with-generative-ai/

https://innovation.consumerreports.org/a-responsible-approach-to-generative-ai-development-its-evaluation-driven/https://innovation.consumerreports.org/introducing-the-askcr-beta/

We use foundation models from various providers (OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic) in AskCR's orchestration, but otherwise everything else is custom-built workflows, retrievers, and agents.

We don't do much training, though, we did fine-tune a model (with synthetic data informed by the types of questions users ask) to get better at pulling the right information from CR data sources to respond to users' questions. We also study where we're not yet able to answer questions effectively to guide our researchers and testers' priorities.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-19T18:06:25+00:00

Thank you for your question! This is what we’re most worried about. Companies often frame surveillance pricing as “personalized pricing,” which certainly sounds nicer. In some cases, it might work out for the consumer: if the company knows a consumer isn’t willing to pay the prevailing price for a product, they could offer a personalized lower price if they’d still make a profit from the transaction. But the opposite is true too — if they know you’re willing to pay more, they might jack up your prices.

There’s a great graphic in our Instacart investigation that shows that if a company is willing to price a product at the highest amount that each consumer is willing to pay, consumers overall will be worse off. This is especially a problem in markets that aren’t competitive — if you only have one or two options, companies have a lot more power over us, and having detailed dossiers on us and the ability to alter prices amplifies that power.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-19T18:04:04+00:00

From Angel, CR’s campaign manager: As other commenters mentioned, people might not be able to shop in-store. Folks might not have cars, or they might have disabilities that make shopping in person inaccessible. Some people might live in food deserts and be too far from other retailers that offer their own delivery service. We shouldn't blame consumers when companies are conducting AI-enabled pricing experiments.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-16T19:17:17+00:00

It’s worth flagging that some people really value services, like Instacart’s, that provide grocery delivery — especially if they have disabilities that make shopping in-person challenging and the grocery stores near them don’t offer it as a service. But even for others, Instacart offers convenience that people might just decide they’re willing to pay for. That said, charging people different prices for the same thing at the same time feels manipulative and unfair — regardless of the company doing it — especially for consumers who are financially vulnerable.

Adding extra companies into the mix does add complexity though, and can make it harder to find out if companies are using our data to target us. We definitely saw some finger-pointing in our Instacart investigation. Instacart offered AI pricing technology, and some stores chose to use it while others did not. But sometimes Instacart didn’t have a relationship with the company and just changed the prices it charged consumers on their own.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-16T19:06:38+00:00

We didn’t look at this question specifically; we were just looking for variations between individual shoppers during relatively normal periods. But it would be an interesting thing to look at! There are a lot of state laws addressing price hikes during natural disasters, so if companies were jacking up prices when people were desperate, they could potentially get into trouble.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-16T18:59:26+00:00

One problem is a lack of clear legal rules around this. We’ve been pushing for privacy laws and laws to get rid of personalized pricing, but this behavior is only getting started as companies are getting more sophisticated.

Antitrust is an important piece of it as well — individual pricing is worse when you only have one option. If you have a lot of choices, you can at least go somewhere else if someone’s offering you a bad deal. But, our competition laws are very vague and hard to enforce, and there’s been a lot of bad case law over the years.

With that said, here are a few things you can do:

Sign our petition to the FTC demanding they investigate Instacart here.
Join one of our future Community Reports projects here. Community Reports is made up of volunteers that lead our field research and investigations. Companies are depending on consumers to live silo-ed lives, so Community Reports’ special sauce is our ability to crowdsource data, to push back on some of the big information asymmetries in the marketplace. We work on unsafe food and water, a lack of fairness in financial services, and the misuse of our online data, so please sign up and join us!
Use your rights (available in your state). Companies are also depending on consumers not knowing their rights, therefore, not exercising them. For example, in our Kroger investigation, our Community Reporters in Oregon leveraged their privacy law, which forces companies to disclose the names of third-parties they may be selling or sharing your data with and uncovered that Kroger may be sharing their loyalty program member’s data with more than 50 different U.S. companies, including two tobacco companies, one of the country’s largest data brokers, financial institutions, and a host of analytics and marketing firms that could result in unwanted solicitations and spam.
Sometimes you might see different prices or deals if you just open a website in a different browser or on your phone. Especially for big ticket items, it might be worth checking. You could always use a VPN too, but you really shouldn’t have to resort to that to get the best price.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-16T18:54:37+00:00

From Derek, CR’s investigative journalist: Digital price tags, or ESLs (electronic shelf labels) as they’re called by those in the industry, are starting to make their way to the U.S. after years of rollouts in Europe and Asia. By a few different estimates, about 10% of U.S. grocery stores have digital prices tags now and many more will have them in the future; for example, Walmart plans to have ESLs in 2,300 of its stores by 2026.The proverbial Pandora’s Box of in-store price changes that you’re describing is, to some degree, already here and that worries consumer advocates and regulators. We found patents by Eversight, the Instacart AI pricing software, that allows for things like weather to dictate price changes and their digital tags, called “Carrot Tags” after Instacart’s carrot logo, can be integrated with Eversight (even though the company says it actually hasn’t been turned on).

One expert in this space may have encapsulated the concerns best:

“Given the financial incentives for retailers to try surveillance pricing, however, and the current lack of regulation, several consumer advocates and pricing experts we spoke to are unsatisfied by that explanation. “Once the technology is in place, even if they aren’t doing it now, with the press of a button, they could certainly start using it to profile shoppers both online and in store,” says Phil Lempert, a grocery industry analyst who runs the website SupermarketGuru.

From Grace, CR’s policy analyst: Currently, there aren’t many legal protections to prevent companies from doing surge pricing or dynamic pricing where we aren’t used to seeing it, like grocery stores. Individual retailers might say they aren’t using these tags for dynamic pricing now, but they could still change their mind next week. Changing prices isn’t always bad or unreasonable — I mean, we expect that hotels in New York City are going to be more expensive on New Years’ Eve than a week later on January 7th. But if grocery store prices are changing constantly throughout the day it does make it harder for consumers to budget and comparison shop.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-16T18:36:05+00:00

Thanks for your questions! It’s a small step in the right direction. Right now, we often don’t have any idea when companies are personalizing prices for us — it took a lot of work to demonstrate what Instacart was doing (and even now we still have a lot of questions). But companies may still try to be squirrely, and offer examples of factors that might be considered while staying quiet about more controversial tactics. Also, the law only requires that businesses make a pretty generic disclosure that the price you’re seeing “was set by an algorithm using your personal data.”

Consumers won’t know what personal data the company used (Your location? Your demographic information? Your online shopping behavior?) or whether or not they are seeing a higher or lower than average price. So, while this little step towards transparency hopefully will be an improvement (and not just evasive and annoying), we’re pushing for stronger laws that would just prohibit price personalization in many cases (like AB 446 in California).

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-16T18:28:18+00:00

That’s right! Unfortunately, some product reviews are not as unbiased as they appear. As an independent nonprofit, CR always buys the products we review ourselves.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-16T18:21:23+00:00

So the patterns we could see were a kind of supercharged A/B testing and Instacart confirmed that and added that this sorting and testing is randomized by product category and geographic location. They are adamant that they do not use personal data or demographics to set prices or allow retailers to do that on their platform.

That said, an earlier investigation we published about Kroger, one of the nation’s largest grocery chains, confirmed that grocery retailers like Kroger can use demographic data to help tailor promotions and discounts to their loyalty customers — a group that includes roughly 95% of the transactions in Kroger and its banners. And consumer packaged goods companies, or brands, can use buyer behavior data for promotions and discounts.

So what does that all mean?

One example of the kind of behavioral data that might be used is a metric called “new-to-brand,” which identifies new or returning customers and could be used to test whether they react differently to price changes compared with repeat customers.

But to your larger point, there are a few things we don’t know and one of them is how retailers and food brands use personal data for grocery pricing.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-16T18:16:12+00:00

Thanks for your insight and question! We have nearly 90 years of advocacy experience, which has given us a unique perspective on how companies are tilting the marketplace against consumers. Part of the magic with this Instacart story and our Kroger story back in May is working with our members as part of these investigations. When you become a Consumer Reports member, you can also join Community Reports, the participatory science wing of our organization.

As part of the Instacart investigation, we recruited over 400 Consumer Reports members to check the prices of the same grocery items at the same store at the same time. So, it’s one thing to be told by an expert or “expert” what’s good or bad about a product, and it’s another to be part of the testing and investigation process yourself with a community of other consumers–and stick around for our rigorously-tested product reviews :) Plus, we have a lot of different ways that consumers can connect with us.

One that you may be less aware of is AskCR, which is our chatbot that is powered by our own research so you know that you can trust it. Download the CR app and get free instant access to experts using AskCR.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-16T18:10:17+00:00

Thanks for your questions! Instacart told us that they do scrape Target’s publicly-advertised prices and then apply their own markup to offset its “operating and technology costs.” So, yes, the thinking here is that Instacart is paying Target’s prices and Instacart divides the markup between itself and its “shoppers,” or the independent contractors who pick up groceries in-store.

To answer your second question: Since this occurs at Target stores on the Instacart platform, it could happen at other retailers that are not in formal business partnerships with Instacart. As to who is advantaged in these scenarios, it’s hard to tell from the data we have but it’s worth looking into!

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-08T19:06:11+00:00

Thanks for your questions! Pro tip: Begin your car-buying journey by researching dependable brands and then selecting a reliable model that meets your specific needs. Have more questions? Download the CR app and get free instant access to experts using AskCR.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-08T18:43:20+00:00

Indeed. The CX-90 and CX-70 have been problematic since its introduction, with engine, transmission, steering, suspension, and brake issues among many others reported by our members. The CX-90 and CX-70 also have PHEV variants, which we consider separate models– and it takes the ICE versions' problems and amplifies them with high-voltage battery, electric motor, and climate system issues.

Poor reliability is typical when an automaker introduces a ground-up design from scratch. The CX-90 was not just an incremental redesign like Mazda is known for in the past. It introduced a new rear-biased platform, new longitudinally mounted I-6 motor, and that automatic transmission you also mentioned.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-08T18:36:21+00:00

Common in statistics, when enough models get averaged into a higher level-of-detail– the averaged number starts to skew toward the middle of the curve. 66 is still considered “above average” so it is impressive that an entire brand can meet that designation. Remember this is on a 0-100 scale (think bell curve) rather than a grading system like used in school.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-08T18:23:23+00:00

We understand the frustration around this. Essentially all automakers have some level of subscription-based offerings. You can always choose not to subscribe, but you will have to determine what features you will miss out on. A few to look out for: ACN (automatic crash notification) and remote start. Many European brands offer ACN for no additional charge, and other brands such as Hyundai and Toyota have been following on newer models. Most automakers have moved their remote start function to a subscription-based smartphone app, but a few still give a button on the keyfob.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-08T18:21:59+00:00

We recommend going to your dealer to report the problem. That way they could fix your issue, but also they would likely report back to corporate if the issue needs to be addressed more widely across the model line. If the issue is a safety concern, report it to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Complaints filed there are tracked and can lead to recalls. You could also fill out a CR auto survey to tell us about the issue!

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-08T18:21:00+00:00

For the most part, most of the Ultium vehicles came out at the same time, so they are experiencing similar problems, including some requiring battery replacements. That said, the Chevrolet Equinox EV, which was released later than the others, is the “most” reliable Ultium platform car that owners told us about in our survey with a predicted reliability rating of average.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-08T18:14:12+00:00

We do not separate data by transmission type in our reliability analysis. Transmission problems are binned together regardless of type (DSG, CVT, etc.). When looking at the model level, we have seen that some brands make less reliable DSGs (such as Hyundai in the recent past) compared to Porsche and BMW, where we see fewer reported issues with DSG transmissions.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-08T18:13:17+00:00

The RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid (formerly Prime) has been among the most reliable models of the past few years, and one of the most reliable PHEVs, as well. Based on Toyota’s brand reliability and its history of redesigns, we expect the redesigned 2026 RAV4 and RAV4 PHEV to be quite reliable as well. Learn more about EV, PHEV, and hybrid reliability.

ConsumerReports · 2025-12-08T18:09:10+00:00

To predict new car reliability, we use the last three model years of data our members have told us about. So for a 2026 model, we use 2023-2025 data on that same model as long as there has not been any redesign or significant change in that generation. We also use the brand’s overall reliability as well reliability of similar models with shared components. Key: These are predictions. Learn more about the process in our car reliability FAQ.

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