Amazon has started issuing refunds to certain customers as part of a $2.5 billion settlement tied to federal allegations that the company misled users about Prime.
A 2023 lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused Amazon of steering some shoppers into signing up for Prime and then making it unnecessarily hard to cancel, according to NBC News.
Under the agreement, Amazon will pay $1 billion in civil penalties, while $1.5 billion is reserved for direct payments to eligible customers.
Email notifications about these payments began going out on Nov. 12 and will continue through Dec. 24, CBS News and NBC report.
“Our settlement required Amazon to pay those people who clearly qualify without them having to do anything,” FTC deputy director of public affairs Christopher Bissex told CBS. “So those people are getting the automatic payments.”
To qualify for an automatic payment, customers must have enrolled in Prime through what the FTC described as a “challenged enrollment flow” — including the universal Prime decision page, shipping selection page, single-page checkout, or Prime Video enrollment flow — between June 23, 2019, and June 23, 2025, according to CBS and NBC.
Individual payments may be as much as $51, per the outlets.
Amazon spokesperson Mark Blafkin told NBC News that customers who aren’t eligible for automatic payments but can still file a claim will be notified between Dec. 24 and Jan. 23, 2026.
Amazon agreed to the settlement in September. At the time, the company said the deal would let it “move forward and focus on innovating for customers.” Amazon also maintained that it works “incredibly hard to make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up or cancel their Prime membership.”
