Missing the 90-day cash-by window on a Federal Trade Commission settlement check can mean losing the money entirely, according to the deadline printed on the notice behind the agency’s newest distribution, the Grubhub refund program. The FTC and the Illinois Attorney General accused Grubhub of misleading delivery drivers about potential earnings and blocking diners from redeeming gift cards, and the agency is now sending 640,038 payments totaling more than $23.8 million to those it says were harmed. The same notice gives anyone paid through PayPal only 30 days to accept the money. That 90-day clock is not unique to Grubhub; it is boilerplate the FTC prints on checks across dozens of its active refund programs.
The Grubhub Notice’s 90-Day Cutoff
The Grubhub refund notice, posted to the FTC’s site on August 10, 2026 and last updated August 12, instructs recipients to cash a check within 90 days and to accept a PayPal payment within 30 days. Those instructions carry the same legal weight as the rest of the settlement order — miss the window, and the agency is not obligated to reissue the money automatically.
Recipients with questions about the Grubhub payments are directed to a phone line for Analytics Consulting, LLC, one of five outside firms the FTC contracts with nationally to administer refund distributions on its behalf, according to the agency’s Grubhub case page. The FTC does not print or mail the checks itself in most cases; it hands a verified customer list to an outside administrator, who sends the payments and staffs the phone number printed on both the check and the notice. That arrangement explains why the same 90-day language shows up on Grubhub’s checks and on checks tied to entirely unrelated cases: the clock is set by standard administrator instructions, not by the specific company being penalized.
The underlying case, brought jointly by the FTC and the Illinois Attorney General, centered on two distinct groups of Grubhub users: delivery drivers the agencies say were misled about the earnings they could expect from delivery work, and diners who found themselves locked out of their own accounts and unable to redeem gift card balances during Grubhub’s cancellation process. Both groups are covered by the same $23.8 million distribution and the same 90-day and 30-day windows, regardless of which side of the complaint a given recipient falls on.
Four dates on a settlement notice: Only one of them is the deadline that matters, and the other three are what make people miss it. See the four-date rule in The Settlement & Refund Recovery System.
Why an Expired Check Isn’t Automatically a Lost Refund
The FTC’s own frequently-asked-questions page acknowledges that recipients sometimes let a check lapse, and it lays out a path back: anyone who did not cash a check in time can call the number on the original notice, and if money is still available in the settlement fund, the agency states it may be able to reissue the payment. That reissue is not automatic and it is not instant — the same page states that after an initial distribution, the FTC generally processes check reissues only once a month.
The wait grows longer for anyone who was originally slated for a PayPal payment but wants a paper check instead. Because the agency must first confirm that PayPal has returned the unclaimed electronic funds before a replacement check can be issued, a converted reissue takes at least 45 days from the original payment date to arrive — nearly half of the 90-day window the Grubhub notice gives for cashing a check the first time around.
Refund amounts themselves are rarely a full accounting of what a consumer lost. The FTC’s guidance explains that in most cases, money is distributed on a pro rata basis, meaning each recipient gets an equal percentage of documented losses rather than a dollar-for-dollar refund, with the exact percentage depending on how much the agency collected from the company and how many people qualified. Whatever is left over after every distribution round is sent to the U.S. Treasury rather than back to the company, and the agency reports that more than 95% of the money it collects for consumer redress over the past five years has ultimately reached the people it was meant to compensate.
More Than 80 Other Federal Refund Clocks Running at Once
Grubhub is one line on a list that the FTC’s refunds page currently shows carries more than 80 active programs, spanning cases as large as a settlement with Amazon over Prime enrollment practices and as narrow as single-company debt-relief and auto-dealer cases. The fine print varies by program rather than following one governmentwide standard.
The Amazon program illustrates the gap. Amazon’s mailed and electronic refund payments expire 60 days after the issue date, a full month shorter than the 90 days Grubhub gives for a paper check, even though both fall under the same agency’s enforcement umbrella. Under a revised order following a $2.5 billion settlement, Amazon is required to keep sending automatic refunds worth up to $200 per eligible Prime customer through April 2027, with no claim form required, while Grubhub’s distribution is a single round of 640,038 payments already moving through the mail and through PayPal.
Because the FTC does not apply one deadline to every settlement check, the agency’s own refund list remains the only reliable way to confirm which cash-by or accept-by date applies to a specific payment, and its frequently-asked-questions page is the only place that spells out what happens — a phone call, a wait of a month or more, sometimes 45 days on top of that — if the date is missed.
Checks With a Shelf Life
The Grubhub notice is one line in a list of more than 80 active FTC refund programs, each carrying its own cash-by, accept-by, or claim-by date buried in a paragraph of settlement language rather than posted in one place. A household juggling a settlement check, an unclaimed-property notice, and a class-action claim form has no single record of which clock is closest to running out, and a missed 90-day window can mean months of calls and paperwork to get the money reissued.
The Settlement & Refund Recovery System is a 36-page guide built around the four-date rule for reading a settlement notice, paired with the scam-proof rules for telling a real FTC notice from a fake one.
Compare a notice’s deadline against the four-date rule for reading a settlement notice in The Settlement & Refund Recovery System.
This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI and reviewed by The Money Overview editorial team.
