WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Amazon.com will pay $2.5 billion in fines and redress to Prime subscribers to settle the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s case alleging the retail juggernaut signed users up for the subscription without their consent and made it difficult to cancel, the FTC said on Thursday.
Of that, $1.5 billion will go into a fund to repay eligible Prime subscribers and Amazon will not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement, the FTC said.
Shares of Amazon were nearly unchanged after the news. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Amazon must now make it easy to cancel Prime as part of settlement.
At a trial in Seattle federal court, the FTC accused Amazon of duping tens of millions of Prime customers by signing them up without consent and locking them in with overly complex cancellation methods.
The FTC started probing Amazon’s subscription practices during President Donald Trump’s first term and the case was filed during Joe Biden’s presidency.
The settlement is the second-largest restitution amount ever for an FTC action, agency officials said, and represents a major win for the FTC’s tough on tech agenda, which began during the first Trump administration.
(Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York and Ryan P. Jones in Toronto)
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