Amazon will pay $2.5B to settle FTC claims it enrolled Prime users without consent. Claim deadline is July 27. Eligible customers can receive up to $51.
Amazon has agreed to pay $2.5 billion to resolve a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit alleging the company enrolled tens of millions of customers into Prime subscriptions without their consent and made cancellation deliberately difficult.
The settlement, disclosed in a June 2025 court filing, includes $1.5 billion in customer refunds and a $1 billion civil penalty. Amazon did not admit wrongdoing. The company said it had already begun issuing automatic refunds to some affected users in November and December of 2025.
Customers who were not paid automatically can still file a claim by July 27, 2025. To qualify, a person must have been a U.S. Amazon Prime member who either signed up through one of the challenged enrollment flows – the universal Prime decision page, the shipping selection page, single-page checkout, or the Prime Video enrollment process – or tried and failed to cancel Prime online between June 23, 2019, and June 23, 2025.
A second condition: the customer must have used three or fewer Prime benefits in any 12-month period after joining. Eligible claimants can receive up to $51, payable by check, PayPal, or Venmo. Amazon expects to send payments in late 2026. A specific date has not been set.
The FTC lawsuit, filed in 2023, accused Amazon of using dark patterns to steer users into recurring subscriptions and of requiring multiple steps to cancel. The company redesigned its cancellation flow in 2022 after European regulators pressed for changes.
For Amazon, the settlement closes a regulatory overhang that had drawn attention from lawmakers and consumer groups. The $2.5 billion payout, while large, represents roughly 0.6% of Amazon's 2024 revenue of $620 billion. The stock has traded in a narrow range since the settlement was announced, with investors focused on the company's cloud and advertising growth rather than the consumer-facing legal risk.
The claim deadline is July 27, 2025. Payments are scheduled for late 2026.
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