Amazon Settlement Over Slowed Prime Deliveries

Amazon.com Inc. agreed to pay $8.25 million to settle claims brought by the District of Columbia. The core allegation was that Amazon secretly excluded customers in two specific Washington, D.C., ZIP codes (20019 and 20020) from its expedited Prime delivery services. Instead of using its own network, the company allegedly relied on third-party carriers, such as UPS and the U.S. Postal Service, which resulted in slower delivery times for residents in those areas.

The District of Columbia claimed that these exclusions, purportedly for safety reasons, meant that approximately 69,000 Amazon Prime customers paid the full membership price but experienced significantly slower deliveries than customers in other areas. The settlement also requires Amazon to notify both Prime customers and the D.C. attorney general if it imposes similar safety-based delivery exclusions in the future, and to alert prospective customers when they enter an affected ZIP code.

Under the settlement, the total payment includes approximately $7.25 million to be distributed to eligible Prime customers who lived in the affected ZIP codes, and an additional $1 million payment to the District of Columbia. Qualified customers are expected to be notified about their eligibility and receive refunds in the coming weeks. The lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.