A federal court this week approved a revised order in the Federal Trade Commission’s Amazon Prime settlement, widening a refund program that has already paid out more than $845 million to consumers who say they were trapped in subscriptions they never meant to buy. The maximum payment rises from $51 to $200, and a new group becomes eligible: Prime members who used between 11 and 20 of the service’s benefits in a single year, a band the original order excluded. Automatic payments to that group start October 1, with no claim form required, and a second round of payments is coming for people who already collected a smaller check.
The Group the Original Order Missed
The FTC’s original order, which followed a $2.5 billion settlement reached in September 2025, sent refunds of up to $51 only to Prime members who used fewer than 10 of the service’s benefits — things like free shipping, Prime Video or Prime Music — in a 12-month stretch after they enrolled. Anyone who used the service more heavily than that, even if they had also been enrolled through one of the enrollment paths the FTC called deceptive, collected nothing.
Under the revised order a federal court approved this week, that gap closes. Amazon will now send automatic redress to Prime members who used between 11 and 20 of the service’s benefits in a one-year period after signing up — a group the company had never had to pay before, even when they met every other test for having been misled. The FTC says those payments become eligible for automatic refunds starting October 1, 2026, and the maximum a member can eventually collect rises from $51 to $200.
The underlying eligibility test has not changed. A member still has to be a United States Prime subscriber who signed up through what the FTC calls a “challenged enrollment flow” — the standard Prime decision screen, the shipping-selection page, single-page checkout or the Prime Video signup path — or who tried and failed to cancel online, and that enrollment or failed cancellation has to have happened between June 23, 2019, and June 23, 2025. On top of that, the agency caps eligibility at Prime members who used no more than 20 Amazon Prime Benefits, including free Prime Video or Prime Music titles, in any 12-month period after they joined.
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How the Automatic Payments Reach Members
No member needs to file anything to collect. The FTC has been explicit that the payments are automatic — there is no claim form, no notice to respond to and no online portal to visit before a check or electronic payment arrives. That is a structural difference from most FTC redress programs, which typically require an eligible person to submit a claim within a set window or forfeit the payment entirely.
Payments go out as a mailed check or as an electronic transfer through Venmo or PayPal, and once one is issued, the clock starts running: Amazon’s payments expire 60 days after the issue date, so recipients need to accept or cash them promptly. Anyone with a question about a specific payment is directed not to the FTC but to the settlement administrator, reachable by email or at 1-888-999-8094, since Amazon — not the government — is responsible for running the program day to day.
The FTC has repeatedly emphasized that it is not the one contacting people about this settlement, and that no legitimate caller — from the government or from Amazon — will ever ask a recipient to pay a fee, provide banking details or transfer money to receive a payment they are already owed. The agency has directed anyone who receives such a call to report it through its consumer fraud reporting site rather than respond to it.
The Size of the Settlement and the Payments Still to Come
The revised order builds on a settlement the FTC calls historic: in September 2025, Amazon agreed to pay up to $1.5 billion in redress to consumers harmed by its Prime enrollment and cancellation practices, on top of a separate $1 billion civil penalty for violating ROSCA, the federal law that governs online enrollment and cancellation. Payments started reaching eligible members in November 2025, and by this September the company had sent out more than $845 million of that redress fund, according to the FTC’s own accounting of the program.
Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said the revised order “will ensure more consumers who were harmed by Amazon’s deceptive enrollment and cancellation practices benefit from the FTC’s historic settlement.” The change came through a joint motion the FTC and Amazon filed together, which a federal court approved this week — a procedural step that made the wider payments possible without reopening the underlying case.
The order also creates a contingency most people who already cashed an earlier $51 check will only see play out later. If the total value of payments consumers actually accept does not reach a threshold the FTC has set for February 2027, Amazon must issue a second, automatic payment of up to $149 to everyone who already received money — bringing their total to the same $200 maximum available to new recipients. That round, if triggered, would go out by April 2027, again without any action required from the people receiving it.
For a settlement of this size, the division of labor is unusual: the FTC negotiated the terms and secured court approval, but it has said plainly that it is not running the payment program and is not the one calling or emailing eligible consumers. That responsibility sits with Amazon and the third-party administrator, Subscription Membership Settlement, which the FTC’s refund page lists as the point of contact for anyone who has questions about a payment that is due but has not arrived.
Where Automatic Refunds Go Wrong
This settlement is unusual because Amazon has to pay automatically, but most redress programs still leave the burden on the person who was harmed: a notice arrives, a case number has to be matched to a deadline, and a form has to be filed correctly before the money moves. The FTC’s own refund list carries dozens of other settlements running on exactly that model, where a missed window closes the payment for good rather than triggering a second chance like the one built into this order.
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This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI and reviewed by The Money Overview editorial team.
