Amazon fined $2.5B for manipulative Prime enrollment tactics “worthy of a Greek Tragedy”

Amazon will fork over an unprecedented $2.5 billion to the FTC over accusations the e-commerce giant used misleading and deceptive practices to enroll consumers in its Prime membership, and then made it nearly impossible for those customers to cancel it.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the landmark settlement on Thursday, stemming from an investigation launched by the consumer protection agency in June 2023.

The FTC complaint had accused Amazon of knowingly employing manipulative enrollment and cancellation tactics to trick consumers into signing up for its Prime membership program without their consent.

Charged with violating the US Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act, Amazon will now pay a $1 billion civil penalty and another $1.5 billion in consumer redress for its transgressions.

“The evidence showed that Amazon enrolled customers into Prime without their knowledge, hid critical information about its costs and terms, and deliberately created an obscure and bewildering cancellation process to prevent customers from cancelling,” FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson posted on X.

The evidence showed that Amazon enrolled customers into Prime without their knowledge, hid critical information about its costs and terms, and deliberately created an obscure and bewildering cancellation process to prevent customers from cancelling. As part of today’s settlement,…

undefined Andrew Ferguson (@AFergusonFTC) September 25, 2025

"Four-Page, Six-Click, Fifteen-Option" cancellation process

The FTC estimates that 35 million customers have fallen victim to the company’s unsavory tactics.

In many instances, the option to bypass purchasing the membership was not clearly presented to consumers, leading many to sign up for the recurring monthly $14.99 subscription charge without even realizing it, the agency said.

And, while Amazon employees were said to have called its own subscription driving process “a bit of a shady world,” internal documents further showed even Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, was, at times, referred to by other C-suite executives as the company’s “chief dark arts officer.”

In its original 159-page legal complaint, the FTC went so far as to compare Amazon’s maze-like cancellation process to the lengthy ancient Greek poem known as the Iliad, naming the devious tactics “the Iliad Flow.”

For those unfamiliar, the epic piece of literature, written in 800 B.C.E. by the much-revered Greek poet Homer (Iliad and the Odyssey), was “set over twenty-four books and nearly 16,000 lines about the decade-long Trojan War,” the FTC explained.

FTC investigators had even titled one section in the complaint as "Prime’s Four-Page, Six-Click, Fifteen-Option Iliad Cancellation Process," due to the “never-ending” navigation process to reach a cancellation option.

In 2017, the year Amazon launched its “Project Iliad,” cancellations of Prime membership subscriptions were down by 14%, saving the company millions in potential profit loss, according to a 2023 report by Insider.

Prime gets an overhaul

The Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act requires all online merchants to provide consumers full disclosure of sale terms before initiating any online financial transaction.

As part of the FTC agreement, the Prime enrollment and cancellation processes will get a complete overhaul, making them both “transparent” and “uncomplicated” for consumers to navigate.

Amazon will have to implement the following measures to satisfy the FTC judgment:

• Adding a clearly visible button to decline Prime, while getting rid of its current “No, I don’t want Free Shipping” button.”
• Adding clearly visible disclosures of all material terms to the Prime enrollment process, including cost, date and frequency of charges, whether the subscription auto-renews, and cancellation procedures.
• Creating an easy, fast, and free Prime cancellation process, identical to the sign-up process.
• Procuring its own independent, third-party supervisor to monitor compliance and the disbursement of restitution to the 35,000 affected consumers.

The settlement is said to be the second-highest restitution award ever obtained by an FTC action.

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