Vonage Settlement: $99.4 Million Refunded Over Hard-to-Cancel Service

Who qualifies

• Vonage customers who tried to cancel their service and were obstructed, or who were charged fees after they had cancelled.
• Both household and small-business customers were covered. Consumer plans ran roughly $5 to $50 a month; business accounts could cost thousands a month.
• People charged undisclosed early termination fees when they cancelled were included. The FTC said some of those fees ran into the hundreds of dollars.
• Customers who were billed after requesting cancellation, or who received only a partial refund of unauthorized charges after complaining, were included.
• No claim, proof, or application was required. The FTC identified eligible customers from Vonage's records and sent checks or PayPal payments directly.
• Customers who cancelled without difficulty and were not charged afterward were not part of the refund group.

The Vonage settlement — what happened

1. 1

   November 3, 2022 — the FTC sued and Vonage settled

   The FTC filed its complaint and a proposed stipulated order in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, case number 3:22-cv-06435. The Commission vote authorizing the filing was 4-0. The claims were brought under Section 5 of the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act.

2. 2

   What the FTC said Vonage did

   Starting in 2017, Vonage required cancellation by phone through a live retention agent while keeping sign-up easy across every channel. The complaint alleged the cancellation number was hard to find on the website, callers were not consistently transferred to it, the line had reduced hours, and promised callbacks did not happen. Customers who got through were sometimes told about early termination fees for the first time, and some continued to be charged after cancelling.

3. 3

   What the order required beyond the money

   Vonage must obtain express informed consent before charging anyone, provide a simple cancellation process available through the same method the customer used to sign up, stop using dark patterns to frustrate cancellation, and disclose the terms of any negative-option plan up front — including what the customer must do to avoid being charged and by when.

4. 4

   October 2023 — the FTC paid 389,106 customers

   The FTC distributed more than $99.4 million of the $100 million fund. Most recipients received a check to be cashed within 90 days; those without an address on file received a PayPal payment to accept within 30 days. Both deadlines have passed.

5. 5

   If you think you were owed a payment

   Contact Epiq, the refund administrator, at 1-877-525-4728 and ask whether a payment was issued in your name. The FTC never charges a fee to release a refund and never asks for account details to process one.

6. 6

   This is now the template for cancellation cases

   Vonage was one of the first large "you can sign up online but must call to cancel" enforcement actions, and the FTC has since brought the same theory against much bigger companies — most notably Amazon Prime, which agreed to a $2.5 billion resolution. If a service makes cancelling hard, that pattern is itself now the violation.

7. 7

   Cancel-friction refunds pay automatically — if they can find you

   Every payment in this case came from company billing records, so the only thing that stopped an eligible customer from being paid was a stale address. ClaimBee tracks which settlements pay automatically and which need a claim, so you know when there is something to actually do.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and official records

Every figure and date on this page was taken from the primary records below — court dockets, agency releases, and the settlement administrator's own notices. Payout averages we describe as averages are calculated from the official totals, not reported per-person estimates.

• FTC — vonage refunds page (current payout status and eligibility)
• FTC press release — FTC Sends Nearly $100 Million in Refunds to Vonage Consumers Who Were Trapped in Subscriptions By Dark Patterns and Junk Fees
• FTC press release — FTC Action Against Vonage Results in $100 Million to Customers Trapped by Illegal Dark Patterns and Junk Fees When Trying to Cancel Service
• FTC case record — Vonage