Amazon customers are finding notices that they are entitled to a credit at Amazon, following the lawsuit settlement against Apple and such high profile publishers as Hatchette, Harper Collins, and Penguin. Two years ago, almost to the day, the government filed an antitrust price-fixing lawsuit against Apple, Hatchette, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin, for price-fixing higher rates on ebooks in an effort to put the squeeze on Amazon and their Kindle.
Didn’t get your Amazon settlement credit notice?
Here’s how to find out how much your Amazon lawsuit settlement credit is.
Apple was named in the lawsuit because the contention was that all of these publishers conspired with Apple to change the scheme for the setting of prices on digital books – instead of the retailer (i.e. Amazon) setting the price at which they sold these publishers’ ebooks, the publisher would set the price, and the retailer (such as Apple, and Amazon) would get a 30% commission. This would mean that all retailers would have to charge the same price for these ebooks. That is known as, yep, price-fixing.
In record time (less than 6 months!) a settlement was reached in the publishers’ anti-trust lawsuit, and Amazon announced that Kindle ebook purchasers would be getting a credit to their account under the settlement.
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In slightly less record time (it’s been a year and a half since the settlement was announced), this week those credits started appearing in users’ Amazon accounts.
Amazon customers who are eligible for these credits will start seeing this notice when they log into their Amazon accounts:
Good news! You are entitled to a credit of $amount for some of your past Kindle book purchases. The credit results from legal settlements reached with publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin in antitrust lawsuits filed by State Attorneys General and Class Plaintiffs about the price of eBooks.
You don’t have to do anything to claim your credit, we have already added your credit to your Amazon account. We will automatically apply your available credit to your next purchase of a Kindle book or print book sold by Amazon.com, regardless of publisher. The credit applied to your purchase will appear in your order summary. If your account does not reflect this credit, please contact Amazon’s customer service.
For more information about the settlements, please visit www.amazon.com/ebooksettlements
Your credit is valid for one year and will expire after 03/31/2015. If you have not used your credit, we will send you another email 90 days before it expires to remind you that it is still available.
Thanks for being a Kindle customer.
The Amazon Kindle Team
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