Collins Interviewed by Law360 Regarding FTC’s $2.5 Billion Amazon Prime Settlement

The Federal Trade Commission reached a $2.5 billion settlement with Amazon to resolve allegations that the company used manipulative “dark patterns” to enroll consumers in automatically renewing Prime memberships and made cancellation unreasonably difficult. The deal, which includes $1 billion in penalties and $1.5 billion in customer refunds, has been hailed as historic — though some question whether it goes far enough to hold the e-commerce giant accountable.

Shawn Collins, Partner at Stradling, shared his perspective with Law360. Collins noted that Amazon faced a serious risk if the trial continued, given that the FTC had what he described as “the holy grail of bad information” — including unflattering internal emails, customer complaints, and evidence of executive indifference.

“I suspect that they were trying to get a pulse for how the jury, especially up in Seattle, was going to receive the opening statements as a litmus for how the presentation of the case was going to go,” Collins explained. “But then their better judgment said, ‘Well, the optics of this don’t look good, and if we lose, this could be a big black eye for us from a PR standpoint, in addition to being a big financial burden on us.’”

Collins observed that while the $2.5 billion payout is eye-catching and will likely deter other companies from adopting similar tactics, it remains to be seen whether the settlement will truly change Amazon’s practices or simply allow the company to move past a potential trial loss.