Online stores can use browsing histories and behavioural data to build detailed pictures of consumers, raising the likelihood of personalised price increases. Describing the growing trend for personalised pricing as “behavioural exploitation”, Dr Raj Joshi says the government must outlaw surveillance-based price increases or risk further undermining consumer trust in market fairness

“If something is advertised as half price, it should actually be half price.” Those were the words used by Prime Minister Andy Burnham when launching a crackdown on what he described as “rip-off business practices” and the need to restore honesty and transparency to consumer markets. He complained that modern life too often feels designed to wear people down through hidden catches, misleading offers and everyday frustrations that quietly drain household budgets.

Consumers are tired of discovering that the headline offer is not quite what it seemed. They are tired of hidden charges, subscription traps, misleading promotions and the growing sense that every interaction with a modern business has become a contest between the customer and the sales department.

Yet while politicians focus on fake discounts and hidden fees, a much larger issue is quietly developing in plain sight. Technology can also change the price because it has learned something about the customer, even when supply and demand have not changed.

My own experience recently brought this question home. I was booking a hire car. The vehicle had been selected, the dates agreed, and the booking was effectively complete apart from pressing the final button. I stepped away for a short period and returned later. The price had increased by approximately 20 per cent. The same vehicle. The same collection point. The same dates. The same consumer. Only the price was different.

Every reader will recognise the experience. We have all seen airline tickets rise between searches or hotel rooms become more expensive when we return to book. But a higher price alone cannot tell us why it changed.

Dynamic pricing is often the explanation. The phrase sounds respectable enough: modern, efficient, data-driven. Yet consumers increasingly suspect that surveillance may sometimes be involved.

That may sound like an overreaction, but it is worth considering what is really happening behind the screen. Modern websites know a remarkable amount about us. They know how long we remain on a page. They know whether we abandon purchases. They know how many times we return. They know what we search for, what we compare, what we hesitate over and, increasingly, what we are likely to buy.

The stated purpose is usually convenience. The practical result is knowledge, and knowledge has always been power. Businesses have good reason to understand their products, but some appear increasingly interested in understanding their customers. Markets traditionally focused on determining the value of goods. Today some appear focused on determining the value of people.

If there’s only one hire car available, a higher price may be perfectly understandable. If an algorithm has concluded that I am now emotionally committed to completing the purchase, however, we are entering very different territory – between market pricing and personal pricing.

The law has not yet decided exactly where that line should be drawn. European rules already require consumers to be informed when prices are personalised through automated decision-making. Lawmakers recognised that a price based on market conditions differs from one based on information gathered about an individual consumer.

When ticket prices surged during the 2025 Oasis reunion tour sales process, millions of fans assumed they were witnessing algorithmic price manipulation. The backlash was ferocious. Politicians became involved, regulators launched investigations and consumers felt cheated.

After a lengthy investigation, the Competition and Markets Authority concluded that it had not found evidence that Ticketmaster used dynamic pricing during the Oasis ticket sale. Instead, the regulator’s concerns centred on transparency. Fans were not clearly informed that standing tickets were sold in tiers, with cheaper tickets selling first. The CMA also criticised ‘platinum’ tickets priced at almost two and a half times the standard price without sufficient explanation that they offered no additional benefits.

The findings might have reassured consumers, but the sense of manipulation had already taken hold. Whether those assumptions were correct in the case of Oasis almost becomes secondary. Consumers increasingly suspect invisible systems are working against them: algorithms changing prices, websites tracking behaviour and somebody, somewhere, calculating exactly how much extra they can be persuaded to pay. The loss of trust had already occurred.

Yet despite this growing awareness, most consumers remain almost entirely in the dark. Few know whether the price in front of them reflects inventory levels, genuine market demand, competitor activity, browsing history, past searches or some combination of all five.

That uncertainty creates something deeply corrosive: distrust. Consumers may no longer know whether the price in front of them is reacting to economic conditions or reacting to them. Online tracking makes the distinction harder to see.

The modern internet has become one long procession of consent notices. Websites reassure us that they use what they call ‘essential cookies’, a phrase that can sound almost magical: essential, necessary, harmless. Remembering login details or keeping items in a shopping basket may be necessary to provide a service. Tracking visits, hesitation or abandoned purchases to build a picture of consumer behaviour serves a different purpose.

The uncomfortable reality is that most consumers have no meaningful understanding of what they are supposedly agreeing to. We click because we have places to go, because there is no realistic alternative and because rejecting everything often requires more effort than accepting it. The legal framework calls this consent. Most ordinary consumers, however, would probably call it surrender.

The entire structure of modern data protection law rests upon the principle that individuals understand how their information is being used. In practice, that assumption has become increasingly difficult to defend. Privacy policies grow longer as tracking technologies become more sophisticated, while the average person struggles to understand what happens to their information.

The law assumes informed consent yet the reality looks much closer to informed exhaustion. Every behavioural signal has potential commercial value, and every abandoned transaction becomes data waiting to be analysed.

The more information collected, the more accurately a business can estimate what a consumer wants, and perhaps what they are willing to tolerate. That should concern us. Businesses exist to make money, but the problem arises when technology moves beyond understanding demand and begins identifying vulnerability.

Consider a parent trying to organise school holiday travel, a traveller facing an urgent family emergency, a commuter stranded by disruption or a customer returning repeatedly because there is no practical alternative. All reveal things about themselves through their behaviour, sometimes without realising it. If that knowledge contributes to higher prices, we should be honest enough to call it what it is: behavioural exploitation.

This is why I find myself increasingly irritated by the tendency of politicians, regulators and technology companies to treat these as purely technical questions. Fairness is at stake: the fairness that underpins consumer law, competition law and data protection.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has repeatedly argued that Europe must set its own standards for the digital world rather than allowing technology companies to define the rules. As she put it: “Whether on environmental or digital regulation. We set our own standards. We set our own regulations.”

Britain should now draw a clear line between legitimate market pricing and surveillance-based pricing. If a flight is nearly full or a hotel has one room remaining, businesses should be free to respond to supply and demand. A price increased because a company has learned something about the customer is a different matter.

The Government should urgently seek to amend Part 4 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which addresses unfair commercial practices. The amendment should make it an unfair commercial practice for a trader to increase or personalise a consumer price using behavioural profiling, browsing history, repeat searches, abandoned baskets or other surveillance-derived data. Genuine market-driven dynamic pricing would remain lawful but surveillance-based increases would not.

Pending legislation, the Prime Minister should ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade to issue a strategic steer to the Competition and Markets Authority, inviting it to investigate surveillance-based pricing as an enforcement priority and publish guidance on its compatibility with existing consumer protection law.

The Oasis controversy should have been a warning. Regulators did not prove algorithmic price manipulation, yet consumers so readily believed that opaque systems were working against them. When people cannot distinguish genuine market forces from pricing influenced by personal profiling, confidence in the market begins to suffer.

A competitive market should discover the value of products, not the psychological breaking point of customers. No consumer should pay more simply because a website knows more about them.

If Europe waits too long to recognise the difference, we may eventually discover that the product being evaluated was never the hire car, the hotel room or the airline ticket at all – it was us.

Dr Raj Joshi is a senior barrister and prominent civil rights advocate whose career spans frontline legal practice, regulatory reform, and international justice. Twice named among the ‘Top 10 Asian Lawyers in the UK’ and listed in the ‘100 Most Influential Asians in the UK’, he has appeared before major inquiries, including giving evidence in the Stephen Lawrence case, and served as Chair of the Society of Black Lawyers. A former Adjudicator to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Dr Joshi has advised ministers, helped shape legal protocols, and represented the UK in international legal forums. 

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