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Lola W. Brabham, president of the commission, did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
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Her statement of concern, which was among many being circulated to lawmakers at the Capitol this week, had noted \u201cthe broad language of the legislation raised concerns among our member institutions regarding whether institutional scholarships, grants, and financial aid programs could inadvertently fall within the bill\u2019s scope.\u201d<\/p>\n
But she said that \u201cit has been clarified that, under the General Business Law, these practices are not considered surveillance pricing, and that institutions of higher education are intended to fall within the bill\u2019s existing exceptions.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Friday, the attorney general\u00a0issued a statement saying the passage of the One Fair Price Act was \u201ca big victory in our fight to ban surveillance pricing and help make life more affordable in New York.\u201d<\/p>\n
The New York Bankers Association was another organization that opposed the legislation. Banks use consumers’ personal financial data to evaluate someone\u2019s credit standing, to verify identity and income and to detect fraud.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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In the memo outlining their concerns, the Bankers Association noted that the version of the bill that was approved in the Legislature had also removed an exemption for financial institutions, \u201cand replaced it with a prohibition written in sweeping terms paired with single, narrow activity-based carve-out limited to creditworthiness evaluations using consumer reports under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.\u201d<\/p>\n
In short, they said, the exemption would leave the financial services sector \u201calmost entirely exposed to poorly understood new standards.\u201d<\/p>\n
They said the legislation \u201cwould, without justification or apparent attention, make it harder for New Yorkers to obtain a mortgage, access affordable credit, and benefit from the fraud and safety protections that federal and state regulators require their banks to maintain.\u201d<\/p>\n
State Sen. Rachel May, a Syracuse Democrat who sponsored the surveillance pricing bill, said it will protect consumers from practices in which their purchasing history, online activity and other information can be used to set individual prices, sometimes resulting in higher costs for certain people.<\/p>\n
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\u201cNew Yorkers shouldn\u2019t have to wonder if the price they see is based on who they are instead of what they\u2019re buying,\u201d May said. \u201cCompanies are using personal data, like browsing history, device type, and even device battery level, to charge people different prices for the same product. That kind of surveillance pricing is unfair, and we can\u2019t allow it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Melissa O\u2019Connor, president and CEO of the Retail Association of New York State, joined the chorus of critics raising concerns about what the law may end up doing to consumers and businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cNew Yorkers in every corner of the state are concerned about affordability and our top priority during the debate on surveillance pricing was preserving access to popular discounts and loyalty programs,\u201d O\u2019Connor said in a statement. \u201cThe legislation, in fact, creates an incredibly confusing legal construct that specifies\u00a0\u2014 and effectively limits\u00a0\u2014 the ways in which retailers can lower prices for consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Thursday, before the legislation was voted on, O\u2019Connor had distributed an opposition memo signed by the Business Council of New York State, the National Retail Federation, Partnership for New York City and nearly two dozen other business, hotel and technology organizations.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe continue to argue with them that \u2026 nobody wants anybody to get higher prices, that\u2019s for sure, that\u2019s wrong,\u201d said Paul\u00a0Zuber, executive vice president of the Business Council of New York State. \u201cBut how are you going to tell the public, in this era of affordability, that, ‘Oh, by the way, you know that discount you used to get? We\u2019re not giving it to you anymore. Why? Because we feel that it\u2019s wrong that you\u2019re getting it and not everybody.’\u201d<\/p>\n
Zuber said that retailers often provide discounts to consumers who are loyal customers, and many will no longer be allowed to do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think anybody benefits from this,\u201d Zuber added. \u201cI believe the Legislature and attorney general were doing it with the right intentions, but we had simple fixes that would have continued that right intention without taking away discounts. They amended it, but it didn\u2019t deal with everything that is problematic, and with everything that would be taken away.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Business Council has also taken the position that surveillance pricing shouldn\u2019t be used to charge consumers higher prices, but they wanted to protect the ability of businesses to offer discounts using pricing technology.<\/p>\n
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Supporters of the legislation, including the\u00a0AARP, contend the measures will combat the misuse of algorithmic pricing, which can cause price increases on items based on a consumer\u2019s personal preferences as well as demand. They say the proposed laws would also help prevent companies from taking advantage of personal data to charge higher prices on products customers are more apt to buy.<\/p>\n
Last year,\u00a0Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law a measure that requires businesses to disclose the use of surveillance pricing. \u00a0<\/p>\n
State Assemblywoman Em\u00e9rita Torres, a Bronx Democrat and the main sponsor of the One Fair Price Act in her chamber, joined the attorney general at a rally in New York City last month championing the legislation, which she said \u201ctakes a critical and necessary step toward protecting consumers from corporations that use personal data and opaque algorithms to charge people different prices for the same product.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cAt a time when New York families are already struggling with the cost of living, we must ensure transparency and fairness in our digital marketplace,\u201d Torres said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"State Sen. Rachel May joined state Attorney General\u00a0Letitia James at a news conference on the state’s efforts to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[844,9,11,10,49,51,50,1165],"class_list":["post-256872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-latestnews","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-state-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}