More than 640,000 checks and electronic payments are moving through the mail and inboxes of Grubhub drivers and diners right now, and each one comes with an expiration date attached. The Federal Trade Commission is distributing more than $23.8 million to people it says were harmed by the delivery platform’s business practices, and the agency is warning recipients that a check left uncashed for too long simply stops being valid. The clock started in early August, and for most recipients it is still running.
What Grubhub Was Accused of Doing
The case grew out of a joint action by the FTC and the Illinois Attorney General, who alleged that Grubhub deceived delivery drivers about how much they could expect to earn on the platform. The complaint also accused the company of blocking some diners out of their own accounts, which prevented them from redeeming gift cards they had already paid for.
Grubhub agreed to settle the case in December 2024, and the resulting order required changes to how the company advertises driver pay going forward. It also created the refund pool that is now being distributed to affected drivers and diners, formalized in the December 2024 announcement of the case and detailed in the underlying court filings.
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640,038 Payments, One Expiration Clock
According to the FTC’s refund page for the case, the agency began sending 640,038 individual payments totaling more than $23.8 million in early August 2026. That figure makes it one of the larger consumer-refund distributions the commission has run this year, and it is being paid out through two channels: paper checks and PayPal transfers.
The distinction matters because each channel carries its own deadline. A recipient who gets a paper check has 90 days from the date it arrives to cash it, the FTC’s August 2026 announcement of the distribution confirms. A recipient who gets a PayPal payment instead has just 30 days to accept it before the offer lapses. Based on the distribution’s early-August start, the 90-day check window is still open for most recipients as of this writing, running into early November.
What Grubhub Actually Agreed To Do Going Forward
Beyond the refund pool, the stipulated order Grubhub signed reorders how the company has to run its business. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, it permanently bars Grubhub from misrepresenting delivery fees, driver pay, or tips, and requires the company to disclose the full added cost of an order before a diner enters payment information. It also creates new rules for a practice the complaint singled out: freezing a diner’s account, including any stored gift-card balance, without notice. Grubhub must now notify an account holder in writing within 48 hours of placing such a block, explain the reason, and restore full access within 12 hours of any internal finding that the block was unwarranted. Any earnings figure Grubhub advertises to delivery drivers must now be backed by evidence the company keeps on file and shares with a driver on request.
The $23.8 million now being mailed to drivers and diners is a fraction of what the order technically authorizes. The order entered a $140 million judgment against Grubhub, but suspended most of it after the company’s sworn financial statements showed it could not pay the full amount; Grubhub’s actual required payment was $24.8 million to the commission, with roughly half of that becoming today’s consumer fund. The suspension is not permanent — if a court later finds Grubhub misstated its finances to obtain that reduction, the full $140 million becomes due immediately. Grubhub also paid $200,000 directly to the Illinois attorney general’s office as a separate condition of the joint settlement.
Why the FTC Builds an Expiration Into Refund Checks
An expiring settlement check is not unique to this case. The commission’s general FAQ page on how its refund programs work explains that checks tied to FTC redress cases are typically time-limited so that unclaimed settlement funds do not sit indefinitely, letting the agency close out a case and account for the money rather than leave it in limbo. There is no fee to cash the check and no additional form to submit — the payment was already approved based on records the agency and Grubhub compiled.
A separate page of frequently asked questions the FTC maintains about its refund programs generally fills in what happens after that window closes. The commission processes check reissue requests once a month, and a recipient who wants a replacement after a check lapses has to wait for the original funds to clear back before a new one can go out — a process that on its own takes at least 45 days. Money that ultimately cannot be delivered to a Grubhub driver or diner does not sit in commission accounts; the FTC sends it to the U.S. Treasury once a settlement fund is closed out. The same page carries a warning that applies to this distribution as much as any other: the FTC never requires an upfront fee or account information to release a payment, and anyone contacted with that demand is dealing with a scam, not the commission.
The Number the FTC Has Not Published
The FTC’s page for the case gives two aggregate numbers — 640,038 payments and more than $23.8 million total — but it does not publish what any individual driver or diner is set to receive. Redress payments in cases like this one are typically calculated from each person’s own transaction history with the company, not distributed as a flat amount, so payments understandably vary from one recipient to the next.
That absence is worth stating plainly rather than estimating around. The commission’s own page remains the only current authority on what this distribution pays, and it stops at the aggregate figures, the 90-day window on checks, and the 30-day window on PayPal transfers. Anyone holding one of those checks has a real deadline to meet, even though the agency has not said what a typical payment is worth.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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