Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) will spend more than $70 million in refunds to its customers for unauthorized billing of in-app purchases from its app store. This was arrived at after the Federal Trade Commission ascertained that the e – Commerce giant failed to ask for an approval of the purchases and especially those made by children. It was put on the receiving end by the court for failing to provide sufficient disclosures, thus it was made answerable for any stuff bought without parents’ consent.
Amazon’s practice violated the FTC Act
The ruling by the FTC may sound harsh but again the commission says that the online retailer failed to uphold to best practices. It violated Section 5 of the FTC Act, which explains how careful businesses should be, in whatever nature of a transaction. The fact that it failed to ask for any password to purchase apps made it very easy for to buy in-game goodies without involving their parents.
However, it did take other steps of restriction but FTC was not convinced that the steps offered informed consent. Many parents were stuck and taken by surprise by the charges of millions of dollars, which they did not approve a majority of them being from “boatload of doughnuts.”
The refund process is simple and online only
Having settled on the way forward, the court says that the next step is to ensure that everyone who was harmed by Amazon’s illegal practices gets a fair treatment. Those eligible for the refund should not find it difficult to get back their money and neither do they have to send anything by mail requesting for the refund.
The process should be straightforward and will just involve logging into their Amazon.com account and from the message center, they can find out about their eligibility. Those applying for a refund have until May 28, 2018, to do so.
Apparently, it is not only Amazon that has been fixed in such cases. Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) have previously found themselves in such situations and have had to make refunds to their customers. The two no longer call apps ‘free’ even when they are free to download. Meanwhile, Amazon’s stock was trading at $996.70 witnessing an increase of $0.92 or 0.09%.
