Amazon settles $2.5B FTC case after Business Insider exposé on Prime practices

Amazon agreed to pay $2.5B ($1B in penalties and $1.5B in consumer refunds) to resolve FTC allegations that it misled users into signing up for Prime and made cancellations overly difficult. The record civil penalty follows a 2022 Business Insider investigation that revealed Amazon knew its “Iliad Flow” enrollment design confused customers but abandoned fixes to preserve growth. The settlement, reached days after a jury was seated in Seattle, also bans executives Neil Lindsay and Jamil Ghani from continuing the practices and requires Amazon to implement “meaningful changes” to Prime sign-up and cancellation flows.