Amazon Flex drivers, watch your mail. The FTC just sent almost $60 million in checks and PayPal payments to eligible drivers who had their tips illegally taken by Amazon.
When customers placed orders through Amazon’s Prime Now or AmazonFresh services, Amazon asked “How much do you want to tip the courier?” Amazon told customers and drivers that “100% of tips are passed on to your courier.” But according to the FTC, from late 2016 through August 2019, Amazon illegally pocketed a big percentage of those tips.
The FTC just sent 139,507 checks totaling $59,428,878 and 1,621 PayPal payments totaling $171,715 to Amazon Flex drivers. Drivers who had $5 or more illegally taken by Amazon will get 100% of their tips returned to them. The highest award amount is $28,255 with an average of $422.
Here is more that drivers need to know:
- Deposit or cash your check by January 7, 2022. If you have a question about your payment, call 1-800-654-8874.
- Drivers getting checks of $600 or more will get a 1099 tax form with their payment. You should report this income on your 2021 tax return.
- Visit www.ftc.gov/AmazonFlex for important information about your check.
Drivers also should know that scammers sometimes try to target people eligible for payments by impersonating the FTC and asking for money or account numbers. To protect yourself, remember that the FTC will never require you to pay upfront fees and won’t ask you for sensitive information, like your Social Security number or bank account information. If someone claims to be from the FTC and asks you for money, it’s a scam.
It is your choice whether to submit a comment. If you do, you must create a user name, or we will not post your comment. The Federal Trade Commission Act authorizes this information collection for purposes of managing online comments. Comments and user names are part of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) public records system, and user names also are part of the FTC’s computer user records system. We may routinely use these records as described in the FTC’s Privacy Act system notices. For more information on how the FTC handles information that we collect, please read our privacy policy.
The purpose of this blog and its comments section is to inform readers about Federal Trade Commission activity, and share information to help them avoid, report, and recover from fraud, scams, and bad business practices. Your thoughts, ideas, and concerns are welcome, and we encourage comments. But keep in mind, this is a moderated blog. We review all comments before they are posted, and we won’t post comments that don’t comply with our commenting policy. We expect commenters to treat each other and the blog writers with respect.
We don't edit comments to remove objectionable content, so please ensure that your comment contains none of the above. The comments posted on this blog become part of the public domain. To protect your privacy and the privacy of other people, please do not include personal information. Opinions in comments that appear in this blog belong to the individuals who expressed them. They do not belong to or represent views of the Federal Trade Commission.
In reply to Wow! What great work on the by Justina
In reply to How is the address determined by Oldhead
Please read FTC.gov/AmazonFlex and the FTC's Refund FAQs to learn more about payments.
In reply to Like Amazon cares about the $ by Bill
The FTC brought a suit against Amazon, alleging that the company secretly kept drivers’ tips over a two-and-a-half year period, and that Amazon only stopped that practice after becoming aware of the FTC’s investigation in 2019. Amazon paid more than $60 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it failed to pay Amazon Flex drivers the full amount of tips they received from Amazon customers over a two and a half year period.
In reply to The FTC brought a suit by FTC Staff
In reply to I’ve worked for Amazon in 3 by Taylor Haendel
Please read FTC.gov/AmazonFlex and the FTC's Refund FAQs to learn more about payments.
In reply to I complained as soon as I by OG Flexer