Instacart—Instacart agreed to pay $60 million FTC settlement for falsely advertising free deliveries and hiding service fees
· $60.0M
In December 2025, Instacart agreed to pay $60 million in customer refunds to settle FTC allegations of deceptive practices. The FTC accused Instacart of falsely advertising free deliveries while not clearly disclosing service fees. Separately, a Consumer Reports investigation found Instacart was running AI-enabled pricing experiments that charged different customers different prices for identical products - sometimes varying by as much as 23%. After the investigation, Instacart immediately ended all item price tests.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consumer Protection | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Corporate Transparency | -against | secondary | -0.50 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.563 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (high ×1.5) × confidence (0.50)