Bad Democrat

Yesterday at 3:21 I got an email in my inbox from service@paypal.com stating “FTC Prime Subscription Settlement Fund has sent you $51. You are receiving this amount because you are eligible to receive a settlement payment under a settlement reached by President Trump’s FTC with Amazon.com Inc., regarding Prime subscription practices, in the case of Federal Trade Commission v. Amazon.com Inc.” It was a legitimate email from PayPal and I was awarded $51 without signing up to receive anything due to a settlement that the FTC reached with Amazon last September in 2025 to the tune of $2.5 billion for making it intentionally hard to cancel Amazon Prime subscription and, allegedly, according to the FCC, for Amazon using “dark patterns” to trick users into signing up for auto-renewing Prime memberships without clear consent. I was so surprised to receive a payout for something and amazed that the Trump Administration did it and could not believe I got that email. Unfortunately, my PayPal account via the email that the FTC used to pay me (Amazon must have sent the FTC the emails of the affected parties) was linked to a phone number that I no longer have (I was routed to change my phone number 2 years ago), and I could not remember the password for the PayPal account, dang, so the text to change my password would be sent to that number that I no longer had. So I was unable to claim my $51. There was actually very little overlap between when I had that former phone number and the email address that I use for Amazon, so the chances that I would have created a PayPal account then were so slim. I did hit “claim my money” on the email about 4 times in attempt to get it by logging into a newer/recently-created PayPal account connected to a different new internal security email address I have, and my present phone number, but it wouldn’t work. Still, I applaud the Trump Administration for its work on this and for getting many people the payout they needed yesterday.