Amazon pays $2.5 billion over a cancel button it designed to fail
The FTC called it a subscription trap. Amazon's own staff called Prime enrollment "a bit of a shady world." Nobody admitted anything.
What happened
The Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon in 2023 over the way people ended up paying for Prime. The complaint described checkout screens that pushed a prominent button to join and a quiet link to decline, price and auto-renewal terms pushed below the fold on phones, and shoppers who believed they were buying Prime Video and got the full $139-a-year membership instead.
Cancelling was its own construction. The FTC described a four-page, six-click, fifteen-option process. Three days into trial in September 2025, Amazon settled.
What it cost them
A $1 billion civil penalty and $1.5 billion in refunds to an estimated 35 million people — the second-largest restitution award the FTC has obtained. Amazon must also disclose Prime terms clearly, take explicit consent before charging, and submit to a third-party compliance supervisor.
Fortune put the total at roughly thirteen days of Amazon profit. Neither the company nor the two named executives admitted wrongdoing.
The part they tried to bury
Amazon initially withheld about 70,000 documents on attorney-client privilege claims. Forced to review them, it withdrew 92% of those claims. In June 2025 the judge sanctioned the company for bad-faith conduct that appeared aimed at tactical advantage.
Internal messages described unwanted subscriptions as "an unspoken cancer," and referred to an executive as the "chief dark arts officer."
Still open
A separate 2023 FTC suit alleging Amazon operates an exploitative monopoly and illegally suppressed marketplace competition has not been resolved.