Amazon will accelerate and expand refund payments to consumers under last year’s $2.5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, after a federal court this week approved a joint motion raising the maximum payment and extending eligibility to millions more customers.
The FTC’s September 2025 settlement — which the Chronicle reported at the time — resolved allegations that Amazon enrolled millions of consumers in Prime subscriptions without their consent and made cancellation deliberately difficult. Amazon agreed to pay a $1 billion civil penalty, the largest ever for an FTC rule violation, plus up to $1.5 billion in consumer redress. As of September 2026, Amazon has issued more than $845 million of that redress.
Under the revised order approved this week, the maximum refund per consumer rises from $51 to $200, and eligibility expands to consumers who used between 11 and 20 Prime benefits in a one-year period — a group not covered under the original terms. Those consumers will begin receiving automatic payments Oct. 1, 2026, without needing to file a claim, respond to a notice, or submit any paperwork.
“The revised order will ensure more consumers who were harmed by Amazon’s deceptive enrollment and cancellation practices benefit from the FTC’s historic settlement,” said Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in the agency’s announcement.
If total accepted payments don’t reach a required threshold by February 2027, Amazon will issue a final round of automatic supplemental payments — up to an additional $149 — to consumers who already received a refund, bringing their total to as much as $200. Those payments are expected to begin by April 2027.
All payments will arrive via mailed check or electronic payment through Venmo or PayPal, with no action required from consumers. The FTC emphasized it is not contacting anyone directly about the refunds and warned that anyone claiming to be from the agency, or asking for payment to release a refund, is running a scam. More information is available on the FTC’s Amazon refund page.
The Amazon case is one of several major FTC consumer-redress actions the Chronicle has covered in recent months, including a $23.8 million refund to Grubhub drivers and diners and the shutdown of an alleged $200 million credit repair scam that targeted military members.
