The Federal Trade Commission has started mailing refund checks and sending PayPal payments to more than 640,000 Grubhub drivers and diners, and the agency’s own guidance means anyone holding one of the paper checks needs to cash it before a deadline that falls in mid-November. The payments, totaling more than $23.8 million, went out in mid-August as the payoff of a case the FTC and the Illinois Attorney General brought against the food-delivery company nearly two years earlier. A recipient who sets an unopened envelope aside, or assumes a government-ordered check doesn’t come with an expiration date, is the one most likely to see the money lapse.
What Grubhub Was Accused of Doing
The refunds trace back to a complaint the FTC and Illinois’s attorney general filed against Grubhub in December 2024, and the allegations covered three separate groups of people. Diners were charged delivery costs the agency said were disguised through separate “service fees” that functioned as a second delivery charge, while some diners with large gift-card balances found their accounts blocked with no clear way to get the money back. Drivers, meanwhile, were recruited with advertised pay rates the FTC said were wildly out of reach in practice, including a Chicago campaign promising up to $26 an hour when the median driver in that market earned closer to $11.
Restaurants were affected as well: the FTC’s complaint says Grubhub added as many as 325,000 restaurants to its platform without their permission, a practice that generated orders those restaurants weren’t set up to fulfill and left some of them unpaid for food they had already made. The company agreed to a $140 million judgment, most of it suspended based on its finances, with a $25 million cash payment earmarked almost entirely for consumer refunds.
The FTC’s original complaint described the diner-fee practice in blunt terms, citing an internal company message that called the pricing structure a “pricing shell game” that was “misleading, eroding trust,” and more expensive than advertised. On the account-blocking side, the agency’s review found that in one month alone, 97 percent of diner accounts Grubhub had blocked were never unlocked, leaving customers unable to reach money already sitting in their own accounts.
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What the Checks Are Worth and When They Expire
The eventual settlement, detailed in the FTC’s original 2024 announcement, also ordered Grubhub to disclose the true cost of delivery upfront, give blocked diners a way to appeal, and back up any future driver-pay advertising with evidence. Nearly two years later, the agency’s August 2026 payment update confirmed that 640,038 affected consumers are now being paid, most by mailed check and the rest through PayPal. The FTC’s instructions are specific about timing: a mailed check must be cashed within 90 days of the date printed on it, which for an Aug. 12 mailing puts the deadline in mid-November, while a PayPal payment must be redeemed within just 30 days of being sent.
Anyone with a question about a specific payment is directed to the case’s refund administrator, Analytics Consulting LLC, rather than to Grubhub or the FTC’s main line, since the agency does not process the individual payments itself. The Grubhub payout is also part of a larger pattern: the FTC’s own tally shows its cases delivered more than $435 million in redress to consumers nationwide in 2025 alone, tracked publicly through the agency’s interactive refund dashboard.
Telling a Real Refund Notice From a Copycat
A real, already-moving refund program like this one is also the kind of story scammers like to imitate, usually with a text or email claiming a “final notice” about a Grubhub payment that requires a fee or personal information to release. The FTC’s guidance for this case states plainly that the commission never requires anyone to pay money or hand over account details to receive a payment they’re actually owed. A message asking for a processing fee, a gift card or banking credentials before a check can be sent is not coming from the FTC or its administrator, no matter how official the sender’s name looks.
A refund check with an expiration date
A 90-day cashing window feels generous until a check sits in a stack of mail for a few weeks and the date quietly passes, and Grubhub’s refund isn’t the only one moving right now with a deadline attached. Several settlements are paying out in the same stretch of weeks, each with its own cashing rule, claim form or filing date to track.
The Settlement & Refund Recovery System includes a current list of open settlements and a claims submission log for keeping every payment’s deadline in one place.
Check this refund against the rest of the current list in The Settlement & Refund Recovery System.
This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI and reviewed by an editor.
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.
