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 c