By Jody Godoy
Dec 18 (Reuters) – Instacart has agreed to pay $60 million to settle the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s allegations that the online grocery delivery platform deceived consumers about its Instacart+ membership and free delivery offers, according to court documents filed in San Francisco on Thursday.
Instacart’s offer of “free delivery” for first orders was illusory because shoppers were charged other fees, the FTC alleged. And the company did not adequately notify shoppers that free trials of its Instacart+ subscription service would convert to paid memberships, the agency said.
Instacart settled without admitting to the allegations.
The shopping platform is under scrutiny over a recent study by nonprofit groups where individual shoppers simultaneously received different prices for the same items at the same stores. The FTC is investigating the company and has demanded information about Instacart’s Eversight pricing tool, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
Instacart has said that retailers are responsible for setting prices, and that pricing tests run through Eversight are random and not based on user data.
(Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York; Editing by Nia Williams, Kirsten Donovan)
