Check your email: Amazon sending out payments in $2.5B settlement over Prime subscriptions

(NEXSTAR) — If you’re one of the millions of people who were signed up for Amazon Prime without your permission, you may want to check your email inbox. The company has started providing automatic refunds from a $2.5 billion settlement it reached with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) earlier this year.

The FTC previously accused Amazon of using “deceptive methods” to register millions of customers for paid Prime subscriptions, then making it difficult for those customers to cancel. In September, the FTC said Amazon would not only have to pay the $2.5 billion settlement but “cease unlawful enrollment and cancellation practices for Prime.”

That includes creating a clear button to allow you to cancel your Prime membership, among other adjustments.

In a statement released last month, the company said, “Amazon and our executives have always followed the law and this settlement allows us to move forward and focus on innovating for customers. 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. We will continue to do so, and look forward to what we’ll deliver for Prime members in the coming years.”

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Nonetheless, Amazon has started to disburse automatic payments to impacted customers, according to the FTC.

Not all of the $2.5 billion will be paid out to customers. The FTC says $1 billion will go toward a civil penalty, leaving $1.5 billion for refunding consumers. There are three requirements you have to meet to qualify for any chunk of that money.

First, you have to be a U.S. Prime member. Second, you had to have signed up with Amazon’s “challenged enrollment flow” or tried and failed to cancel your subscription — either needs to have happened between June 23, 2019, and June 23, 2025. And finally, you had to have used less than three Prime benefits — like Prime Music or Prime Video — during any one-year period after becoming a Prime member.

If you meet all three criteria, you may receive a refund of your subscription fees, though the FTC says this will be capped at $51.

“Eligible Consumers are receiving the actual Prime membership fees they paid up to $51, minus the amount of any refunds, credits, or chargebacks already returned,” the FTC explains.

You are asked to accept that refund within 15 days for the funds to go to a PayPal or Venmo account. If you would rather receive a paper check, the FTC says you should ignore Amazon’s email. That will prompt a check to be sent to the default shipping address on your Prime account. The FTC encourages cashing that check within 60 days.

If you haven’t received a payment yet, don’t worry. According to the FTC, disbursement will continue through Dec. 24.

Next year, a claims process is expected to start for eligible Prime customers, the FTC says. Additional details about this process have not yet been released.