Overview
- Amazon began automatically issuing a new round of refunds on Thursday through Venmo, PayPal or mailed checks to newly eligible Prime customers.
- A federal court broadened eligibility to include people who used between 11 and 20 Prime benefits in a 12-month period and raised the per-person cap from $51 to $200.
- Eligible customers do not need to submit claims or paperwork and must cash or redeem electronic transfers or checks within issuer timelines, which typically allow about 60 days.
- The FTC warns it will not contact people about these refunds and urges recipients to ignore callers or messages that ask for fees, passwords or bank details because scammers are likely to exploit the payouts.
- The settlement sets aside $1.5 billion for consumer redress and $1 billion as a civil penalty, Amazon had paid roughly $845 million through September, and the company must make supplemental distributions by April 2027 if required to exhaust the redress fund.