Same cart, different price: TODAY's 'Gouged' segment draws sixteen times its usual start
Vicky Nguyen's report with author Lindsay Owens on price experiments and personalized pricing left Craig Melvin, Justin Verlander and Stars Hollow far behind on the same day's uploads.
TODAYStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 58,381 views a day, 16 times a normal first day on this channel (3,684).
How Companies Charge Your More Based on Your Shopping Data
Two shoppers can put the same item in the same cart and get two different prices. That is the uncomfortable idea at the center of "How Companies Charge Your More Based on Your Shopping Data," and it moved faster than anything else TODAY posted on September 30. Thirteen hours in, it had passed 43,000 views, roughly sixteen times what a new upload on the channel usually gathers in a whole first day.
NBC's Vicky Nguyen reports, and her guide is Lindsay Owens, an economist who leads the Groundwork Collaborative. Owens is the author of a new book, "Gouged: The End of a Fair Price and What That Means for Your Wallet." Across retail, travel and food, she describes two practices. One is the "price experiment," where prices change at random from one customer to the next. The other is what she calls surveillance or personalized pricing, where the price is set from what a company knows about you.
The contrast with the rest of the day is striking. Craig Melvin's "Sexiest Man Alive" nomination, Justin Verlander's farewell hug from his daughter and Warner Bros.' holiday version of Stars Hollow all sit in the low thousands. Only the Painterland Sisters, who turned their family's dairy into a skyr yogurt brand, got past 10,000.
The comment section reads like a group of shoppers comparing notes. Many ask why there is no rule against it. Others swap workarounds: check out as a guest, change the search engine, borrow a library computer. Delivery apps come up again and again. And one viewer describes planning a cruise with her sisters for their mother's birthday, only to find each sister was quoted a different fare.
Published on Trari
What viewers say
Time to buy things from the library computer??
@MycoASee it on YouTubeMy sisters and I noticed this when we were planning a cruise for my mothers 60th. We all received different prices and ultimately we had the person getting the best value to purchase the tickets.
It’s crazy to think this is going on..@selaneespinoza2650See it on YouTube"Convenience fees"
@boarderificSee it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
Is this your channel?
Share the story with your audience: in a community post, in your channel's description or on your socials. The text and the badge are ready.
You may use the picture, the badge, and link it to this story.
- Channel
- TODAY
- Subscribers
- 5,110,000
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,784,658 (on a normal day: 1,276,225)
- Video published
- September 30, 2026
- Video views so far
- 43,316 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 58,381
The numbers
For a channel whose daily uploads range from celebrity news to fall fashion, a consumer report opening at this pace is far from routine.
💡 Test your knowledge
Stars Hollow, the Gilmore Girls town Warner Bros. is decorating for the holidays, is set in which state?
Gilmore Girls places Stars Hollow in Connecticut, a short drive from Hartford, where Lorelai's parents live.
