Back in 2016, Amazon was found guilty of illegally billing parents for in-app purchases accidentally made by their children. Unsurprisingly Amazon decided to appeal the decision, but interestingly enough the company appears to have changed their mind and has since dropped its appeal.
What this means is that moving forwards, customers who were part of this can soon expect to have their unwanted in-app purchases refunded to them. According to the ruling back in 2016, the judge found that Amazon had failed to clearly notify parents that while the app might be free for download, it might still include in-app purchases, and that they did not provide enough notice or security measures that could have prevented these purchases.
This is also why companies such as Apple have made changes to their App Store over the years where they clearly label apps that have in-app purchases, and also why apps are no longer titled as “Free”. It has been estimated that in total from November 2011 up to May 2016 that parents might have been billed upwards of $70 million because of this.
The refund program is expected to begin “shortly” where it will be credited back to the customer’s debit/credit card, or via a paper check. This was also after Amazon had originally suggested that refunds come in the form of gift cards.