Federal Trade Commission Declaration On Thursday, a breakthrough agreement with Amazon alleged that the company enrolled millions of customers in the main membership without clear consent and intentionally made the cancellation process difficult.
The agreement includes a $ 1 billion citizen fine – it is the largest in the FTC case involved in a rule – and the agency told customers RT 1.5 billion dollars were returned, who said that fraudulent prime registration and cancellation were damaged by practice.
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a statement, “The evidence proved that Amazon used sophisticated subscription traps designed to design the name of the prime, and then the customers made their subscriptions extremely difficult,” said FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson in a statement. “Today, we are giving back a few billion dollars to Americans’ pockets and make sure that Amazon never does so again.”
The case is different from FTC’s larger antitrust suite against Amazon on the online retail and marketplace services, which are still running.
This settlement was derived from the 2023 FTC charges against Amazon. Earlier this month, a federal judge of Seattle had ruled that Amazon Violation The Online Buyer Protection Act collects payment information before publishing the entire Prime terms, a push on the company as the trial begins this week.
The FTC says that Amazon has to make “meaningful changes” in the stream of main enrollment and cancellation and submit to the observation of independent consent.
However, Amazon says the changes in the FTC press release are the agencies already made in recent years.
“Amazon and our executives have always followed the law and allow us to move forward and concentrate towards innovation for customers,” Amazon said at one StatementThe “We work up incredibly hard to clean and simplify it to make it sufficient price for our many million loyal members around the world to sign up for customers or to cancel their major membership.”
The Seattle-based tech giant did not acknowledge the injustice under the settlement. It was previously argued that the prime conditions were clear and the cancellations were accessible.
According to the FTC, Amazon appointed confusing checkout flow and fraudulent user interfaces — as described as “Ga Dark ie patterns”-the prime sign-ups they did not expect to stop them. In parallel, the FTC has alleged that Amazon has created a complex cancellation process.
The settlement forces the prime enrollment interface to renew the prime – requires a more clear manifestation and a “clear and obvious button” to reject the Prime. Amazon can’t have a button that says, “No, I don’t want free shipping.”
FTC assumes that 35 million customers will be eligible for return.
Amazon Prime Membership cost $ 139/year or $ 15/month. Customers get discount on shipping, video and music streaming and other facilities.
Amazon does not reveal the data of specific Prime membership. In the month of March 2025 there was an approximately 197 million Amazon customer who had major membership, according to Customer Detective Research Partners – June 2024 is up to 7% compared to the marginal.
The earnings of Subscription Services, which include major membership, came to $ 12.2 billion in the recent quarter of the company. It was about 7% of Amazon’s overall income in the quarter.
Amazon’s shares were slightly reduced on Thursday. The company has about $ 2.5 trillion market capital.
Editor Note: The story has been updated in additional context from AmazonThe