Customers of Amazon and Apple, among others, get money back for too expensive e-books

US customers of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Apple, in particular, are getting refunds for overpriced e-books between 2010 and 2012. The refund is a result of the lawsuit against Apple and major publishers for inflating e-book prices .

For example, because of an agreement between Apple and the publishers, customers paid between 2010 and 2012, instead of the $9.99 Amazon wanted to charge, $12.99 or $14.99. For each book on the New York Times bestseller list, customers will receive a refund of $6.93, and for other books it’s $1.57, the law firm that led the lawsuit said.

Customers will automatically receive the money back into the account, after which they can spend that amount on new products that the relevant online stores offer. If there are customers in the Benelux who get money back, there won’t be many. The refund is for US accounts only. In Europe, Apple already reached another settlement, which included no refund.

The case started after Apple tried to negotiate agreements with a number of publishers with a standard contract. Part of the agreement was that the publishers could determine the prices of e-books themselves via an ‘agency’ model, with Apple receiving 30 percent of the price. This strategy aimed to challenge Amazon’s monopoly in the e-book market. However, according to the US Department of Justice, these behaviors were price-fixing and also caused e-book prices to rise. In total, Apple has to pay 450 million dollars, which is currently approximately 396 million euros, which includes legal costs in addition to the reimbursement costs.