Amazon has reinstated binding arbitration for its US customers, blocking them from bringing class-action lawsuits, Reuters reported, citing internal company emails.
The revised terms took effect immediately, with the company telling customers that continued use of its services constitutes agreement to the changes.
Disputes and class actions already under way before 14 August 2026 remain unaffected by the new policy.
Rolling out terms changes without an advance notice period departs from typical industry practice, where companies usually give customers several weeks' notice.
The retailer had dropped mandatory arbitration five years ago, after being hit with tens of thousands of individual arbitration claims that proved costly to process.
Under the reinstated terms, Amazon now classifies 25 or more arbitration cases tied to the same issue within a six-month window as “mass arbitration”, to be resolved in batches of at least 25.
A company spokesperson told Reuters: “We determined that reinstating the arbitration clause will offer customers a fast, cost-effective way to resolve disputes while still giving them the option of going to small claims court.”
Retail Insight Network has approached Amazon for further comment.
The company's earlier retreat from arbitration followed a surge of activity in 2021, when it fielded roughly 75,000 arbitration filings from customers who alleged that its Alexa voice assistant had captured recordings without their permission.
Legal observers have linked that volume to a strategy employed by certain law companies—flooding corporations with mass arbitration submissions to trigger substantial upfront filing costs and stretch administrative capacity.
Since arbitration proceedings are conducted privately before a third-party arbitrator, the disputes themselves and any settlements reached rarely become public record.
For the most part, courts have been willing to enforce terms-of-service provisions that dictate the channels through which customers may seek legal remedies.
The arbitration policy reversal follows other recent legal exposure for the company.
Earlier this month, Amazon was named in a proposed class action in the US alleging it overstated the environmental credentials of seafood products sold through its marketplace.
Separately, a US appeals court this month lifted an injunction that had blocked Perplexity's AI-driven shopping tools from operating on Amazon's platform.
