A federal class action over Amazon’s handling of returns has a $309.5 million settlement on the table, and one group of customers has until December 1, 2026 to file a claim form if they want a payment. A second group is paid automatically. The court will not decide whether to approve the deal until a final approval hearing on March 16, 2027.
The case is In re: Amazon Return Policy Litigation, No. 2:23-cv-01372-JNW, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. It covers customers who were shorted on refunds for returned items between September 5, 2017 and February 12, 2026, according to an announcement from settlement administrator Angeion Group distributed by PR Newswire.
Who has to file by December 1 and who is paid automatically?
The official settlement site splits the class in two. It says Settlement Subclass A members “will automatically receive a payment” and do not need to submit a claim form. Settlement Subclass B members, by contrast, must submit an eligible claim form to be paid, and December 1, 2026 is the deadline for that form.
Which subclass a customer falls into is spelled out in the site’s FAQ. So the first job for anyone who returned items to Amazon during those years is to find out whether they sit in the group that waits for a payment or the group that has to file one. Guessing wrong in the second direction means no payment at all.
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What is the $309.5 million fund, and how much goes to each person?
Angeion’s announcement says Amazon will pay an additional $309.5 million into a non-reversionary common fund. Non-reversionary means none of the money goes back to Amazon, whatever share of members file. No one has published a per-person amount, so the $309.5 million is the size of the pot and not a check amount for anyone.
Part of the fund will not reach customers. The announcement says class counsel may ask the court for up to $100 million in attorneys’ fees, which is about a third of the fund. The judge decides how much of that request to grant, and the payment to members comes after fees and administration costs are covered.
What happens at the March 16 hearing?
The final approval hearing is set for March 16, 2027, at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, and the settlement site tells people to watch it for updates. The hearing is not a payment date. The site states that no class member payments will be made unless the court approves the settlement and it becomes final, so even the automatic Subclass A payments wait on the judge.
December 1, 2026 does triple duty. It is the deadline to file a claim form, and also the last day to submit an exclusion, which removes a person from the class so they can sue Amazon on their own, and the last day to file an objection to the deal. Someone who wants to push back on the settlement and someone who wants to be paid under it face the same date.
The settlement site gives no payment date. A claim filed this week therefore waits on a court ruling that cannot come before the March 16, 2027 hearing, and the site asks people to keep checking it for updates. For a Subclass B member the work is front-loaded: file by December 1, 2026, keep a copy of what was submitted, and then wait for the court.
Where is the claim filed?
Claims go through the official settlement site at returnsettlement.com, and the administrator’s mailing address is Amazon Return Policy Litigation Settlement Administrator, 1650 Arch Street, Suite 2210, Philadelphia, PA 19103. The open question for anyone in Subclass B is simple and has a firm answer date: whether the form is in before December 1, 2026, nearly three and a half months before the judge hears the case.
Filed your Amazon claim before December 1?
Missing the December 1, 2026 date means no payment for a Subclass B member, and the March 16, 2027 hearing date is easy to mistake for another deadline. A settlement with a filing date, an exclusion date, an objection date and a hearing date gives a reader four dates to tell apart.
The Settlement & Refund Recovery System includes the four-date rule for reading a settlement notice, a step-by-step filing walkthrough, and a claim log and payment tracker, plus a large-print quick-start for anyone who wants the steps on paper.
Get the December 1 claim tracker for the Amazon returns settlement →
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
