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Had trouble getting a refund for items you returned to Amazon? You could get a cut of a $309 million settlement the e-commerce giant is paying to shoppers for failing to honor its return policy.
According to court documents, Amazon agreed to the settlement last Friday, following a long legal battle stemming from two class-action lawsuits filed in 2023 that pointed to problems with Amazon’s hassle-free returns. This allegedly included customers being mistakenly charged for an order they returned, which could have gone unnoticed by many shoppers.
(Credit: Amazon lawsuit)The settlement calls for Amazon to pay $309.5 million to shoppers who didn't get a refund or received an untimely or incorrect refund amount. "Recovery to individual class members is tied to the value of their unpaid refunds. Members of both subclasses are expected to receive a full refund plus interest,” a court document adds.
The compensation covers US customers who initiated a return or requested a refund for goods sold through Amazon starting on Sept. 5, 2017. A settlement document notes that Amazon already distributed over $570 million to affected consumers in 2025.
Amazon began negotiating the settlement last year to avoid a protracted legal battle. The company has also pledged “to improve its return and refund practices,” which includes increased monitoring, auditing, and more redundancies to prevent problems.
Although Amazon is forking over $309 million, attorneys can claim up to $100 million in fees. The court must approve the settlement before the funds can be distributed. But consumers can expect the settlement fund’s administrator to eventually email them about the case and, if they’d like, opt in to receive the compensation.
In a statement, Amazon added: "Following an internal review in 2025, we identified a small subset of returns where we issued a refund without the payment completing, or where we could not verify that the correct item had been sent back to us, so no refund had been issued. We started issuing refunds in 2025 for these returns and are providing additional compensation and refunds to eligible customers per the settlement agreement. We have taken steps to fix the payment issue and made process changes to more promptly contact customers about unresolved returns going forward.”