A US judge has criticized Amazon for not providing documents to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in a lawsuit that claims the company engaged in deceptive practices related to its Prime subscription service.

In a ruling issued on July 11, 2025, US District Judge John Chun in Seattle said that Amazon’s withholding of thousands of documents during the evidence-sharing process demonstrated “bad faith.”

Although Amazon cited attorney-client privilege as the reason for withholding the information, Chun noted that certain emails did not support this justification.

The FTC filed the lawsuit against Amazon in 2023.

It alleges that the company enrolled millions of consumers in its Prime subscription service without their consent and made cancellation difficult.

The agency accused Amazon of using “dark patterns,” or manipulative user-interface designs, to mislead users into signing up for automatically renewing subscriptions.

Amazon has denied these allegations, and a trial is scheduled for September.

Both Amazon and the FTC declined to comment on the ruling.

🔗 Source: Reuters

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ Amazon’s ongoing regulatory battles reflect pattern of consumer protection disputes

The current FTC case against Amazon’s Prime subscription practices is part of a long-standing pattern of regulatory challenges facing the company.

In 2017, Amazon settled with the FTC over unauthorized in-app purchases by children, agreeing to provide over $70 million in refunds to affected consumers 1.

That case similarly centered on consent issues, with a federal judge ruling that Amazon’s billing practices violated the FTC Act by failing to obtain proper authorization from parents 2.

This pattern continued in 2019 when Washington’s Attorney General required Amazon to remove toxic children’s products from its marketplace and issue refunds exceeding $200,000 to consumers who had purchased items containing dangerous levels of lead 3.

The consistent thread across these cases is the allegation that Amazon failed to adequately protect consumers, whether through billing practices, product safety, or subscription tactics.