Millions of Amazon Prime customers who were excluded from earlier refund rounds could begin receiving automatic payments October 1 under an expanded federal settlement addressing how the company enrolled subscribers and handled cancellation requests.
The Federal Trade Commission and Amazon obtained court approval this month for a revised payment plan tied to their $2.5 billion settlement. The agreement requires Amazon to provide $1.5 billion in consumer refunds and pay a $1 billion civil penalty. The additional payments stem from the same case that produced the first round of refunds in November 2025; they are not a new promotion or a rebate offered to all Prime members.
The FTC brought the case in 2023, alleging that Amazon enrolled consumers in automatically recurring Prime subscriptions without their informed consent and made those memberships difficult to cancel. Amazon agreed to the settlement in September 2025 without admitting wrongdoing. The order also requires changes to its enrollment and cancellation practices.
Under the original payment terms, eligible customers could receive up to $51 in Prime membership fees. The revised order extends automatic refunds to millions of additional customers who used between 11 and 20 Prime benefits during a 12-month period after enrolling. Those customers were outside the earlier automatic payment groups.
Eligibility still depends on the circumstances of a customer’s membership. A person must have been a U.S. Prime customer who enrolled through one of the online processes challenged in the case, or tried unsuccessfully to cancel through Amazon’s online cancellation process, between June 23, 2019, and June 23, 2025. The customer also must have used no more than 20 Prime benefits during a qualifying 12-month period after enrollment. Prime Video and Prime Music use can count toward that total.
Amazon will determine eligibility from its records and send payments by mailed check, PayPal or Venmo. Customers included in the new automatic payment round do not need to submit a claim, complete a form or respond to a notice. October 1 marks the start of that round, rather than a date by which every eligible customer will have received a refund. The FTC says automatic payments under the revised order will continue through April 2027.
The court-approved changes also raise the maximum total refund for an eligible customer from $51 to $200. That figure is a ceiling, not a payment guaranteed to every recipient. It includes a possible later payment for some customers who already received money.
That additional payment depends on how much of the required consumer refund amount has been accepted by February 2027. If the threshold has not been reached, Amazon will issue further automatic payments to eligible customers who accepted earlier refunds. Those payments could be as much as $149, bringing an individual’s total to $200. The final supplemental round is scheduled to begin by April 2027.
By September, Amazon had issued more than $845 million in payments under the settlement. The expanded plan is intended to distribute more of the consumer refund money to people covered by the order.
The refund program has also created an opening for impersonation scams. The FTC says it is not contacting customers about Amazon refunds, and neither the agency nor Amazon will charge a fee to release a payment. Anyone who receives a message demanding money or personal information to secure a refund should treat that request as suspicious. Eligible customers should watch for an automatic payment and accept it promptly: checks and electronic payments expire 60 days after issuance.