Business Blog
FTC’s Amazon settlement sends a $60 million message to businesses: Honor your promises to gig workers
The FTC just sent almost $60 million in checks and PayPal payments to eligible drivers who had their tips illegally taken by Amazon. Our advice to Amazon Flex drivers: Watch your mailbox for a check. Our advice to companies that hire gig workers: Watch what you say to workers and customers – and live up to your claims.
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 as the FTC alleged in its complaint, from late 2016 through August 2019, Amazon illegally pocketed a substantial percentage of tips that customers expressly earmarked for drivers.
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.
Do you or your employees have friends or family who have been Amazon Flex drivers? Tell them to visit www.ftc.gov/AmazonFlex for more information.
For companies that hire gig workers, remember that established consumer protection principles apply. Make sure you can substantiate what you say in your ads and promotional materials. That includes representations to workers about earnings and claims to customers about your tipping policies.
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.