Grubhub drivers and diners who receive a refund from the Federal Trade Commission face two different deadlines, depending on how the money arrives. A PayPal payment has to be accepted within 30 days, while a mailed check has to be cashed within 90. The FTC’s page for the program counts 640,038 payments worth more than $23.8 million.
Grubhub refunds from the FTC. The news leaves open which of the two clocks a given payment is on, and The Settlement & Refund Recovery System includes a claim log and payment tracker for noting each payment’s method and date.
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Who the 640,038 payments went to
The FTC’s Grubhub refunds page describes “640,038 payments totaling more than $23.8 million to Grubhub drivers and diners harmed by the food delivery platform’s deceptive claims or misleading and unlawful conduct.” The FTC lists the distribution under August 2026, and the page was last modified on August 12, 2026.
Dividing the FTC’s two figures gives a little over $37 a payment. That is arithmetic and not an FTC number, since the agency publishes no per-person amount, and the count is of payments, so the number of people paid may be smaller. Actual payments could be larger or smaller than the average, and the page does not say how amounts were set.
The conduct behind the refunds
According to the page, the FTC and the Illinois Attorney General alleged that Grubhub deceived delivery drivers about how much they could earn, and that it blocked diners from their accounts, which kept them from redeeming gift cards. Both groups are covered by the payments, which is why the program is described as going to drivers and diners and not to one class of customer.
The FTC names Analytics Consulting LLC as the refund administrator. The agency’s refund index lists the program with that administrator and the phone number 1-888-446-4992, the same number the Grubhub page gives for questions about a payment.
A refund program with no claim form on the page
The Grubhub page describes payments that have already been sent and mentions no claim form, no filing window and no application. The FTC’s general refund guidance, covered below, says most of its cases work that way. For a recipient, that means the deadlines on the page are the only ones in play: nothing has to be filed by a date, but a payment that arrives still has to be dealt with on time.
Thirty days for PayPal, ninety for a check
The page puts the two rules in nearly the same words. A recipient paid by check is told to “cash it within 90 days,” and a recipient paid through PayPal is told to “accept it within 30 days.” The PayPal window is one third as long as the check window, and the PayPal payment is the one that needs a deliberate step, accepting it, while a check needs only to be deposited.
The FTC page publishes no issue date for the payments, and it does not say whether either clock starts when a payment is sent, when it is received or on some other date. The only timing the page supplies is the August 2026 distribution month, so a check sent in August would run out of its 90 days in roughly mid-November 2026, a date that moves with each check’s own issue date. If the PayPal clock also started in August, it has already run out for payments sent that month, a point on which the page is silent.
Warnings printed on the FTC’s refund index
The FTC refunds index, where the Grubhub program appears with its August 2026 date, carries a standing alert: “Scammers are impersonating the FTC.” The agency says it will never threaten anyone, say that money must be transferred to “get a refund,” or promise a prize. The FTC’s stated rule is that it never asks for money to release a refund.
The warning matters for the 30-day PayPal window in particular, because a short deadline is the kind of pressure imitation messages rely on. The index is also the place to confirm that Grubhub is a listed, active program before acting on any message about it.
Two clocks, two payment types and no issue date to count from
The difficulty in the Grubhub program is the mismatch between the page and the calendar. Two deadlines of different lengths apply to two payment methods, and the FTC’s page leaves out the date either one starts from. A recipient who holds both a PayPal notice and a mailed check, for example a person who both drove for the platform and ordered from it, could be carrying two separate countdowns that began on different days.
The FTC’s refund payments FAQ covers some of the aftermath. It says that if a check is lost or expired and money remains in the fund, “we may be able to reissue your payment,” that check reissues are processed monthly, and that converting a PayPal payment to a check takes at least 45 days. It also says the FTC sometimes sends refunds through PayPal, in emails from .gov addresses, and that accepting a payment does not require anyone to give up rights under federal or state law.
Reissue depends on whether money remains in the fund, which the FAQ does not promise. The official route is free: the refund administrator can be called at 1-888-446-4992, and the FAQ says the FTC never requires upfront fees to receive a refund.
Payments that arrive by different routes need separate notes
The Grubhub refunds the FTC began distributing in August 2026 run on two clocks, 30 days for a PayPal payment and 90 days for a check, and the program page gives no issue date to count from. The unfinished job is recording each payment’s method and arrival against its own deadline, in a place that survives a crowded inbox.
The Settlement & Refund Recovery System includes a claim log and payment tracker and the steps for getting an expired or uncashed settlement check reissued, so the record and the fallback sit together.
Keep each Grubhub payment’s deadline in one place →
This piece was drafted with AI assistance; the figures and deadlines were checked against the FTC’s Grubhub refunds page, its refunds index and its refund payments FAQ.
