Instacart Busted Charging Different Amounts for Identical Items

The home delivery app Instacart is charging people vastly different prices for identical items, a study led by Consumer Reports has found. The report warned that the pricing differentials could be worth as much as $1,200 a year to a family which uses the app for its regular shop. The report used 437 shoppers to place identical orders at branches of stores including Target and Safeway in four cities—Seattle, Washington; Washington, D.C.; Saint Paul, Minnesota, and North Canton, Ohio—then compared the prices for each order. The highest price difference found was 23 percent. In one case a box of Cheerios cost one shopper $4.99 and another $6.12. In total 75 percent of items were priced differently, the research by Consumer Reports, the non-profit think tank Groundwork Collaborative, and the n