Description

Landlords are using software to band together and organise artificial rent hikes. Uber is spiking the price of rides when your phone’s about to die. And without drivers’ knowledge, car companies are installing software that reports your driving behaviour to insurance companies, so they can collude against you on insurance prices.

Instead of merely driving down costs, companies are now laser-focused on boosting revenue by wringing as much out of consumers as possible, bringing in record profits as a result. Price hikes are old as dirt, but today’s companies have reinvented them, using a dizzying array of sophisticated and deceitful tricks to do something pretty darn simple: rip you off.

In Gouged, Lindsay Owens takes you inside the corporate boardrooms where pricing decisions are made, uncovering the techniques – from junk fees and shrinkflation to algorithmic collusion – that corporations use to jack up prices. But if there’s one thing we have in common, it’s that we are all consumers. It’s time to fight back.

Publisher Review

Gouged is a must-read for anyone wondering how everything got so damn expensive and who is profiting off your misery. This book is for students renting their first apartment, parents trying to feed their families, travellers paying way too much to fly, and consumers getting ripped off at every turn by AI-fuelled pricing schemes. Lindsay Owens is a brilliant writer and a phenomenal investigator who excels at deconstructing the complex into a riveting story – and she of course has a plan to fight back. If you’re sick and tired of being squeezed by giant corporations and just want life to be a little easier and much more affordable, this book is for you — ELIZABETH WARREN Ever have the sneaking suspicion that you’re paying more for something online than you should be, or than your neighbor is? You probably are. And you should be outraged. Lindsay Owens tells us how we got here and what we should do about it. Required reading — RANA FOROOHAR, author of DON’T BE EVIL Too much of American business now depends on bilking customers when they are weakest, and gouging has gone from an occasional outrage to a constant aggravation. Lindsay Owens’s fascinating, engaging, and often enraging book will leave you wondering how we let things get this bad and why we can’t do better — TIM WU, author of THE AGE OF EXTRACTION In Gouged, Lindsay Owens reveals how the world is undergoing a revolution in how companies price goods for sale – and, no surprise, corporate America’s predatory financial actions do not favor you. Gouged is not just incisive and revelatory; it is one of the most important books of the year — HELAINE OLEN, author of POUND FOOLISH Gouged is a state-of-the-art inquiry into the reinvention of the ripoff happening right now in boardrooms across the country. Lindsay Owens has written an essential portrait of corporate America’s digital underbelly Lindsay Owens has written a thrilling true crime story about how the largest corporate monopolies in America have hatched a scheme to pick our pockets. Gouged is the book corporate America does not want you to read — ROBERT B. REICH, former US Secretary of Labor Gouged uncovers a hidden cause of the affordability crisis: algorithms that set prices, which often means tailoring the price for individuals and fixing the price across markets. Corporate greed is nothing new; what’s new is the technology that has made competition, fairness, and transparency obsolete. As a result, consumers are paying more for everything from rent to medicine to groceries. Owens’s book reveals the new ways that big tech is allowing big corporations to rig the game, and what we can do to fight back — HEATHER MCGHEE, author of THE SUM OF US Gouged is an entertaining expose into the high-tech methods (from dynamic and drip pricing to dark patterns) that big businesses and ruthless employers use to cheat consumers and workers. With this brilliant debut, Lindsay Owens offers us shocking stories and essential strategies we need to fight together for fair prices and wages — JENNIFER TAUB, author of BIG DIRTY MONEY Corporate executives must read this book. In Gouged, Lindsay Owens chronicles corporate overreach in pricing. Just because data science and real-time computing can enable efficient and opaque profit maximisation doesn’t make it the smart or right thing to do. Gouged brings sunshine to pricing strategies that many would prefer remain in the shadows, exposing practices that are exploitative and supporting us in demanding greater accountability — BOB HEDGES, MIT Digital Fellow and former Visa Chief Data Officer