Germany’s Federal Court of Justice strikes down Amazon’s Prime price clause: what merchants with subscription models must check now
On 1 October 2026 the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice) ruled invalid the clause Amazon used in 2022 to raise the annual Prime fee from 69 to 89.90 euros (III ZR 205/25). The reason: customers could not tell whether they could only fend off the increase by cancelling or simply by objecting.
What happened
On 1 October 2026 the Bundesgerichtshof (BGH, Germany’s Federal Court of Justice) ruled that a subscription provider’s terms and conditions for raising its “membership fee” are invalid because they breach the transparency requirement (III ZR 205/25, press release no. 184/2026). According to LTO, the case concerns Amazon Prime: in 2022 the annual fee rose from 69 to 89.90 euros and the monthly fee from 7.99 to 8.99 euros. The court found that the clause can be read in two ways: as a unilateral right to change the price that the customer can only counter by cancelling, or as an offer the customer can reject with a simple objection and keep the old price. This ambiguity puts customers at an unreasonable disadvantage. According to LTO, Amazon is temporarily reinstating the old prices for members whose subscription began before 15 September 2022 and has run unchanged since; amounts already paid are a matter for separate proceedings.
Who is affected
Every online merchant and service provider with recurring billing: memberships, delivery subscriptions, software, maintenance contracts. Indirectly, also every merchant who signs contracts containing price adjustment clauses themselves, for instance for the till, the terminal or software.
Analysis
The ruling is not about the size of the increase but about how it was introduced. And that is exactly where it gets expensive for anyone with a subscription model: if you email customers “cancel if you don’t agree” while your terms grant a right to reject, you have a problem that the next direct debit will not solve. The recurring payment keeps running perfectly from a technical point of view, but legally it may be collecting an amount that was never agreed. That is the stuff refund claims and returned debits are made of.
For merchants, the ruling has a second side. Many sign contracts in which the provider reserves the right to adjust fees “at its reasonable discretion”. The ruling concerns consumers; different standards apply between businesses, and it does not carry over one to one. The question is still a fair one: does my contract state clearly what I can do if the fee goes up? I wrote about fee increases nobody had to announce in my commentary on rising payment costs.
What to do now
- Subscription providers have their price adjustment clause and their template email for increases reviewed: both must describe the same customer response, cancellation or objection, not a vague mix of the two.
- Anyone raising prices documents consent or the expiry of the deadline per customer before collecting the higher amount.
- Merchants put their own contracts for terminal, till and payment processing alongside and mark every clause that lets the provider change fees unilaterally.