Support Fair Grocery Prices

As your constituent, I am writing to urge you to co-sponsor and support Senator Bradley's Price Transparency Act (SB839) that prohibits the use of data-driven dynamic pricing in retail and delivery services across North Carolina when it relies on customers’ personal information. Please do everything in your power to move this bill out of committee and get it passed, while ensuring that it prevents BOTH delivery services as well as grocery stores from engaging in dynamic pricing of groceries and household goods. The bill also places limits on anti-competitive mergers that you should support. Increasingly, businesses are using personal data—such as purchase history, location, income indicators, and online behavior—to tailor prices to individual consumers. While companies may frame this as innovation, in practice it risks creating a system where people are charged different prices for the same goods based not on market conditions, but on what algorithms predict they are willing or able to pay. This practice threatens the market's role supporting human flourishing. It raises serious concerns about transparency, and privacy. Consumers are often unaware that their data is being used in this way, and they have little ability to opt out or verify whether they are being treated equitably. Essential goods like groceries and household necessities should not be subject to opaque pricing systems that may disproportionately burden certain groups, including lower-income families. Maryland recently passed similar legislation and North Carolina has an opportunity to take a leadership role in protecting consumers by establishing clear rules: pricing for goods and services should be consistent and not influenced by sensitive personal data. Reasonable exceptions could be made for broadly available discounts, loyalty programs, or time-based pricing that applies equally to all customers, but individualized surveillance-based pricing should be off-limits. I respectfully ask that you champion this legislation and ensure pricing transparency and protects residents from discriminatory or exploitative pricing practices. Doing so would help preserve trust in our markets and support human flourishing. Thank you for your time and your service to our state. I would appreciate hearing your position on this issue.