The Federal Trade Commission is sending another wave of payments tied to Amazon’s tip-withholding settlement, this time using Zelle transfers to reach Amazon Flex drivers who never cashed an earlier paper check. The new payments add to more than $60.6 million the agency has now returned in a case involving tips withheld from drivers between 2016 and 2019. For anyone who worked Flex routes in that window and assumed the case was long closed, a stalled payment from years ago may still be on its way into a bank account.
The Tip-Withholding Case Behind the Payments
The payments trace back to an FTC investigation into how Amazon paid its Flex drivers. Amazon Flex is the on-demand delivery program in which independent drivers use their own vehicles to deliver Amazon packages and groceries, often earning tips directly from customers on top of a base rate; Amazon had advertised that Flex drivers would earn $18 to $25 an hour and prominently told drivers they would “receive 100% of the tips you earn.” According to the FTC’s announcement of the settlement, Amazon quietly shifted in late 2016 to a lower hourly rate and used customer tips to make up the difference, without telling drivers the arithmetic had changed. “Rather than passing along 100 percent of customers’ tips to drivers, as it had promised to do, Amazon used the money itself,” said Daniel Kaufman, then the FTC’s Acting Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection. Amazon agreed to pay $61,710,583 into a fund for eligible drivers to resolve the charges, without admitting wrongdoing. The settlement also barred Amazon going forward from misrepresenting a driver’s likely pay, hourly rate, or share of tips, and from changing how it handles a driver’s tips again without first getting that driver’s express, informed consent.
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How Amazon Concealed the Pay Change From Drivers
The FTC’s complaint, summarized in the same settlement announcement, alleged Amazon kept telling both drivers and customers that 100 percent of tips were being passed through even after the pay formula changed, and that the company took deliberate steps to keep the change quiet — one employee reportedly wrote to colleagues that Amazon “did not want to communicate any pricing changes” to drivers. When drivers noticed their earnings had dropped and complained, the FTC says they received form emails falsely reassuring them that nothing had changed. Amazon did not return to paying a fixed hourly base plus 100 percent of tips until August 2019, after learning of the FTC’s investigation, at which point it also began giving drivers a line-item breakdown of pay versus tips.
Why the FTC Is Still Sending Payments Five Years Later
The FTC’s case page shows the money has gone out in stages rather than all at once. The agency sent an initial round of checks in November 2021, an event covered in its own press release on the first distribution, then a second round in May 2025 after recovering more money tied to the case, bringing the total returned to drivers past $60.6 million, according to the FTC’s Amazon Flex refunds page. Not every driver cashed the checks mailed in those earlier rounds. An uncashed check eventually expires, but the underlying obligation to pay that driver does not disappear — the agency instead looks for another way to deliver the money. That is the purpose of the current round: it targets people who qualified for an earlier payment but never cashed the check, and it delivers the money by Zelle directly into a bank account rather than by mail.
What a Zelle Payment From This Program Looks Like
A Zelle payment under this program arrives as a direct deposit accompanied by a note identifying it as related to the Amazon Flex settlement, the FTC says on its refunds page. The agency repeats a warning that accompanies nearly every refund program it runs: it never asks a recipient to pay money, buy a gift card, or share banking credentials in order to receive a refund. Drivers with questions about a payment can call the refund administrator at 1-800-654-8874, and the FTC maintains a frequently-asked-questions page covering common issues with its consumer refund programs, including what to do if a payment never arrives.
A Settlement the FTC Keeps Revisiting
The Amazon Flex matter illustrates something true of many FTC refund programs: a settlement’s payout is rarely a single event. Money is often distributed across several rounds spanning years, as the agency recovers additional funds, locates consumers who have moved, or replaces checks that were never cashed. This case has now produced at least three separate distributions since the original 2021 settlement, the most recent of which the FTC dated to August 2026 on its refunds page for the case. For a settlement now in its fifth year, that page remains the definitive record of who still has a payment outstanding. The FTC’s Amazon Flex case file is likewise still the reference point for the underlying facts, since it was that record — not a new complaint — that produced this month’s Zelle transfers.
Where Older Budgets Recover Ground
Separately, refund checks and settlement payments are not the only money that routinely goes unclaimed by older households. VA Pension with Aid and Attendance, state drug-cost assistance, and SSI after 65 all exist to help with everyday costs, but each one is opt-in, and no agency automatically enrolls someone who qualifies.
The Benefits Checklist is a 69-page guide covering 11 such programs along with their 2026 income limits and a 50-state phone directory for finding local contacts.
Compare current income limits program by program in The Benefits Checklist.
This article was written with the assistance of AI and reviewed for accuracy before publication.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
