Grubhub refunds: 640,038 payments

The Federal Trade Commission is sending 640,038 payments totaling more than $23.8 million to people harmed by Grubhub, in one of the larger consumer refund rounds of the year. The money goes to two groups at once: delivery drivers and the diners who ordered through the platform.

What the case was about

The FTC brought the case together with the Illinois Attorney General. According to the agencies, Grubhub's conduct included deceiving delivery drivers about the earnings they could expect from delivering food, and blocking diners from their own accounts in a way that prevented them from redeeming gift cards they had already paid for.

Those are two different harms with two different groups of victims, which is why a single fund is being split between drivers and customers rather than paid to one class.

Who is being paid, and how

Payments are automatic. The FTC has the customer and driver records from the company, so there is no claim form and no application. Eligible people receive a payment without doing anything.

The instruction that matters is on the FTC's case page: if you get a check, cash it within 90 days. Refund checks from FTC cases expire, and money that is not cashed returns to the fund and is redistributed to others or, eventually, to the Treasury. An expired check is not automatically reissued.

How to tell a real payment from a fake one

Refund rounds of this size attract impersonators within days. The FTC does not ask for money to release a refund, does not ask for a bank password, and does not send a link that must be clicked to "verify" eligibility before payment. A message that does any of those is not from the FTC, whatever it looks like.

If a payment does not arrive and you believe you qualify, the FTC's case page names the refund administrator handling the distribution and gives a phone number. That page, reached by typing the FTC's address rather than following a link, is the only place worth entering details.

Where this sits among current programs

The FTC runs several refund programs at once, and the amounts vary widely: Amazon Flex drivers have received more than $60.6 million across three rounds, University of Phoenix students more than $49 million, and smaller cases a few hundred thousand. The FTC refunds tracker lists the programs currently paying, with the totals, the payment counts and whether any action is needed.

Grubhub's round is unusual mainly in its breadth. Most FTC refunds reach thousands of people; this one reaches more than half a million.