Price fixing

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Price fixing is determined by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as

An agreement (written, verbal, or inferred from conduct) among competitors to raise, lower, maintain, or stabilize prices or price levels.

This agreement often is used as a dark pattern among companies established among various industries to harm consumers, despite its illegal status within the United States and its territories.

How it works

Price fixing tends to cause the price of a product to be consistent among competitors, however, this often comes to the detriment of consumers, since if Company X were to raise the prices of a product, so would Company Y and Company Z. This eliminates competition in local, and sometimes even larger, scales.

Why it is a problem

Elimination of competition

In the current economic landscape, competition drives the benefit of the consumer, be it by driving down prices, providing better quality products, and more. The elimination of this competition means events such as shrinkflation may occur.

Refusal of service

Cases, such as in Puerto Rico with optometrists, have occurred where unless contracts were on collectively agreed-upon terms from the companies, that these contracts were refused or threatened to be refused. This can corner consumers to agree to unfavorable terms, such as forced arbitration, to access a product or service.

Examples

Some examples of price fixing include:

• Payscore - a service that multiple apartment managers and rental companies use to fix the price of rent, thus harming affordable housing
• Colegio de Optometras, Edgar Davila Garcia, O.D., and Carlos Rivera Alonso, O.D., In the Matter of