Amazon Class Action Challenges Unauthorized Prime Membership

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Amazon.com LLC has been hit with a class action lawsuit filed by a woman who says the online retail giant failed to cancel an Amazon Prime membership that was charged to her bank account without her authorization.

Plaintiff Latoya Christmas says that her debit card was used without her consent to purchase goods from Amazon.com in September 2016. The same card was used to sign up for a $99 Amazon Prime membership, the Amazon class action lawsuit states.

On Sept. 29, 2016, Christmas reportedly called Amazon to notify the company that unauthorized purchases had been charged to her debit card. She requested cancellation of the Amazon Prime membership. According to the Amazon.com class action lawsuit, Amazon agreed to cancel the Amazon Prime membership and refund the $99 fee to Christmas’ debit card.

Christmas believes that Amazon would have continued to take additional unauthorized recurring payments from her bank account if she had not called to cancel the Amazon Prime membership, even though she had never provided Amazon with consent to deduct funds from her account on a recurring basis.

The next day, Christmas says Amazon withdrew another $99 from her bank account for a recurring Amazon Prime membership. She immediately called Amazon to have the charges refunded, but the retailer failed to refund the money, the Amazon class action lawsuit alleges.

According to the Amazon class action lawsuit, Amazon “concealed, suppressed and/or omitted” the fact that Christmas’ bank account would be debited another $99 annual membership fee even though she had cancelled the Amazon Prime membership.

Christmas claims she never provided Amazon.com with any authorization to deduct the Amazon Prime membership fee from her account. According to the Amazon class action lawsuit, she did not provide the retail giant with any written or electronic communication that authorized these recurring payments.

By filing the Amazon Prime class action lawsuit, Christmas seeks to represent herself and a Class of consumers whose bank accounts were debited by Amazon after Amazon had received a cancellation request for the Amazon Prime membership. She also seeks to represent an Illinois subclass.

The Amazon.com class action lawsuit asserts violations of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act and the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act.

“In multiple instances, Defendants debited bank accounts of the Class and the Sub-Class members on a recurring basis after the consumers requested to stop payments of preauthorized electronic fund transfers from the consumers’ accounts by notifying the financial institutions orally or in writing at least three business days before the scheduled date of the transfers, in violation of the EFTA,” the Amazon class action lawsuit states.

Christmas is seeking statutory damages of $1,000 per violation of the EFTA, actual and punitive damages, attorneys’ fees and costs, and other relief deemed appropriate by the court.

The plaintiff is represented by David B. Levin and Todd M. Friedman of the Law Offices of Todd M. Friedman PC.

The Amazon Prime Membership Class Action Lawsuit is Latoya Christmas v. Amazon.com LLC, et al., Case No. 1:17-cv-01301, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.