Amazon to pay $2.5 billion to settle FTC claims over unwanted Prime enrollments
The Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement requiring Amazon to pay a $1 billion civil penalty to the FTC and $1.5 billion to refund customers after alleging Amazon enrolled roughly 35 million customers into Amazon Prime without proper consent and made cancellations difficult through deceptive interface designs.
Key settlement terms
- $1 billion civil penalty to the FTC (largest civil penalty in an FTC breach case).
- $1.5 billion in consumer redress to provide refunds for affected customers (estimated ~35 million people).
- Amazon must stop using deceptive “dark patterns” in the Prime sign-up and cancellation flows — for example, removing misleading options such as a button reading “No, I don’t want Free Shipping” during cancellation.
- Amazon must provide clearer information about Prime at sign-up: price, whether the subscription auto-renews, and how to cancel.
Why it matters
The FTC called this the largest civil penalty it has obtained in a case involving a rules breach and the second-highest restitution award in agency history. The settlement aims to return money to affected consumers and change Amazon’s UX practices to prevent future unwanted enrollments.
Sources
Engadget was reported as having contacted Amazon for comment in the original reporting; this post does not link to the Engadget RSS source.