{"id":416032,"date":"2026-01-16T03:44:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T03:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/416032\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T03:44:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T03:44:13","slug":"us-legal-case-against-amazon-prime-subscription-service-leads-to-cheque-in-the-mail-for-australian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/416032\/","title":{"rendered":"US legal case against Amazon Prime subscription service leads to cheque in the mail for Australian"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you go to your mailbox and find a cheque for $US51 from Amazon Prime, it may not be a scam but the result of a US legal case.<\/p>\n

This is exactly what happened to Wollongong resident Laura Wells, who had to find out why the corporate giant sent her money.<\/p>\n

“It was bizarre to open up an official-looking cheque from the US, unbeknownst to me that I was even getting it,” she said.<\/p>\n

The company reached an agreement with US regulators last year to pay $US2.5 billion ($3.8 billion) in fines and reimbursements to Prime subscribers to settle allegations it deceived its customers to generate subscriptions.<\/p>\n

\"Amazon<\/p>\n

Amazon Prime is providing refunds to mainly US customers. (Reuters: Gustavo Graf)<\/p>\n

After discovering details of the reimbursement on the internet, Ms Wells said she hoped the full amount would be passed on to her, as banks often take a conversion fee and other payments.<\/p>\n

“I am not holding my breath that it will be fee-free but I’m sure I will see a little bit of money deposited into my account,” she said.<\/p>\n

‘Confusing’ situation\u00a0<\/p>\n

Melbourne Law School consumer protection expert Jeanie Patterson said the unusual case had caused widespread confusion.<\/p>\n

She said the Federal Trade Commission brought an action against Amazon for “confusing interfaces” in 2023.<\/p>\n

“People went on to Amazon US to sign up to buy an item and they were offered two free days of shipping,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“By clicking that button and in fact not opting out, they were [inadvertently] signed up to Amazon Prime, which is about $14 a month \u2014 or a year depending on the deal you got \u2014 and didn’t know they were signed up.<\/p>\n

“They then weren’t able to unsubscribe and so at the end of last year there was a settlement and part of that was that Amazon had to pay customers that were affected back.”\"Photo<\/p>\n

Customers were offered two days of free shipping, which also inadvertently signed them up to Amazon Prime. (Reuters: Gustavo Graf)<\/p>\n

The Federal Trade Commission said on its website that, as a result of the historic settlement, Amazon began sending claim notices to eligible Prime customers in January 2026.<\/p>\n

A statement from Amazon in September said the company and its executives worked hard to make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up and cancel their memberships.<\/p>\n

“Amazon and our executives have always followed the law and this settlement allows us to move forward and focus on innovating for customers,” it said.<\/p>\n

Amazon did not admit wrongdoing in the case and has since told the ABC some eligible Australian customers could get a cheque if they “previously signed up to Prime via Amazon.com and not Amazon.com.au”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you go to your mailbox and find a cheque for $US51 from Amazon Prime, it may not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2574,219529,8036,61575,36987,43,92761,44,20401,94687,110499,41,39,42,40,219528],"class_list":["post-416032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-amazon","tag-amazon-prime-subscription","tag-consumer-protection","tag-court-case","tag-fine","tag-headlines","tag-mail","tag-news","tag-prime","tag-reimbursement","tag-subscribers","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-us-federal-trade-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}