Check your mail: You may be getting an automatic payout as part of $2.5 billion Amazon settlement this holiday season.
The settlement comes after a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission that said the online retail giant tricked tens of millions of customers into signing up for its Prime memberships and made it difficult for them to cancel after doing so.
According to the FTC, payouts started going out to Amazon Prime customers Nov. 12. As part of the settlement, the company must pay $1 billion in civil penalties, and $1.5 billion pack to customers
FTC officials said Amazon had its back against the wall and the consumer refund amount exceeded even the agency’s expert projections.
“I think it just took a few days for them to see that they were going to lose. And they came to us and they paid out,” said Chris Mufarrige, director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, on the settlement negotiations.
Amazon, however, said it was confident it would win the case but that it chose to resolve it quickly instead of going through potentially years of trial and appeals. The company admitted no wrongdoing in the case, which was first filed two years ago.
“Amazon and our executives have always followed the law and this settlement allows us to move forward and focus on innovating for customers,” spokesman Mark Blafkin in a statement to the Associated Press in September. “We work incredibly hard to make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up or cancel their Prime membership, and to offer substantial value for our many millions of loyal Prime members around the world.”
As payments start going out, here’s what to know.
Who is getting a payout?
The settlement says certain Prime members are eligible for payouts if they unintentionally signed up for — or attempted to cancel — a membership through one of the following ways, between June 23 2019 and June 23, 2025. These pathways are referred to as a “Challenged Enrollment Flow:”
- The universal Prime decision page
- Shipping selection page
- Single page checkout
- Prime Video enrollment flow
Those people also have to be Amazon Prime customers in the United States, and used no more than three Prime benefits — including Prime Music, Prime Video or other similar free products — in any 12-month period following enrollment.
How to get a payout
Many customers will be eligible for an automatic payment as part of the settlement. Here’s who qualifies for that, according to the Settlement Administrator website:
- You are a U.S. consumer who signed up for Prime between June 23, 2019 and June 23, 2025, and
- You enrolled through a Challenged Enrollment Flow, and
- You used no more than three Prime benefits in a 12-month period from June 23, 2019 and June 23, 2025
Customers who fall into this category “do not need to take any action to demonstrate their eligibility,” the website said.
There are also a group of customers who are eligible to receive a payout if they file a claim. That group will receive a notice via email or mail by Jan. 23, 2026. According to the administrator, the claims process for that opens on Dec. 24, 2025.
“In 2026, Amazon will begin its claims process for eligible Prime customers who didn’t get an automatic refund between November and December 2025,” the FTC said.
You are eligible for a Claims Process Payment if:
- You are a U.S. consumer who signed up for Prime between June 23, 2019 and June 23, 2025, and
- You used more than three but less than ten Prime benefits in a 12-month period from June 23, 2019 and June 23, 2025, and
- You unintentionally enrolled through a Challenged Enrollment Flow or tried to cancel through the online cancellation flow but were unable to do so.
When are payouts being sent, and how?
According to the FTC, Amazon started emailing customers who are eligible for an automatic refund Nov. 12. That process will continue through Dec. 24, the FTC said, with automatic refunds send by Venmo or PayPal.
“Please accept your refund within 15 days,” the FTC said.
Those who prefer a check can simply ignore the email from Amazon, the FTC added.
“Once you do not claim the PayPal or Venmo payment, Amazon will mail you a check to your default shipping address listed on your Prime subscription,” the FTC said. Checks should be cashed within 60 days.
The same process will go for those who didn’t automatically accept the refund in the email sent.
How much are payments?
Under the settlement, eligible Prime customers will receive a refund of their Amazon Prime subscription fees, up to a maximum of $51.
More information about the settlement can be found on the FTC website, and on the settlement administrator website here.
What to know about the settlement, and Amazon Prime
Amazon Prime provides subscribers with perks that include faster shipping, video streaming and discounts at Whole Foods for a fee of $139 annually, or $14.99 a month. It’s a key and growing part of Amazon’s business, with more than 200 million members.
The FTC said Amazon deliberately made it difficult for customers to purchase an item without also subscribing to Prime. In some cases, consumers were presented with a button to complete their transactions — which did not clearly state it would also enroll them in Prime, the agency said.
Getting out of a subscription was often too complicated, and Amazon leadership slowed or rejected changes that would have made canceling easier, according to an FTC complaint.
Internally, Amazon called the process “Iliad,” a reference to the ancient Greek poem about the lengthy siege of Troy during the Trojan war. The process requires the customer to affirm on three pages their desire to cancel membership.
The FTC began looking into Amazon’s Prime subscription practices in 2021 during the first Trump administration, but the lawsuit was filed in 2023 under former FTC Chair Lina Khan, an antitrust expert who had been appointed by Biden.
The agency filed the case months before it submitted an antitrust lawsuit against the retail and technology company, accusing it of having monopolistic control over online markets.
In 2019, Facebook, now known as Meta, was fined $5 billion for violating a FTC order against the company on user privacy. The fine Amazon now faces is the largest such penalty for violating an FTC rule that applies to all companies.
As part of the settlement terms, Amazon is prohibited from misrepresenting the terms of the subscriptions. It must fully disclose the costs to be incurred and obtain the customer’s express consent for the charge. For example, it must have a clear option for customers to accept or decline a Prime subscription being offered during a purchase, avoiding potentially confusing language such as: “No thanks, I don’t want free shipping.”
Automatic renewals for memberships must be clearly marked and the company is also required to use a cancellation process, which “must not be difficult, costly, confusing or time consuming,” according to the settlement.
Amazon said the settlement doesn’t require it to make any additional changes — only to maintain its current sign-up and cancellation process that it had put in place in recent years.
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