Amazon’s $309.5M settlement over refunds it never issued on returned items won preliminary approval from a Washington federal judge on August 18, seven months after the deal was filed. The cash fund is one piece of a package the plaintiffs’ lawyers valued above $1B, alongside roughly $600M in refunds Amazon has paid or still owes and $363M in commitments to fix how it handles returns. Anyone in the US who started a return since September 5, 2017 and got nothing back, got the wrong or a late amount, or was charged again afterward is covered. Amazon denies wrongdoing and says a 2025 internal review turned up a subset of returns where it approved a refund the payment never completed, or where it couldn’t confirm the right item came back. Final approval is set for March 16, 2027.
