Back to Kashfetti →We quote dollar amounts across this site. Those come from actual laws and government rules, and you should be able to check them yourself. Every one is listed below with the law it comes from and a link to read it.
Everything below is what the law allows you to recover. None of it is a promise about what you personally will get. Whether you recover anything depends on your own circumstances, the evidence you have, who the other side is, and how it plays out. Plenty of people go through the whole process and recover nothing. We would rather tell you that upfront than sell you on a number you never see.
Of the money handled in 2024, 93 percent went back to consumers rather than to administrative costs or the Treasury. The FTC sent first-round payments in 33 separate cases that year.
$314,837,561.91 was sent across 4,350,411 eligible consumers in the cases that had their first distribution during 2024. Averages vary enormously by case, from about $23 to more than $1,100, so the average is a poor predictor of any individual claim. Separately, the refund programs the FTC closed during 2024 returned more than $148 million at an average of $127.58 per person.
Computed as dollars sent divided by eligible consumers, from the FTC's published table. Opendoor $61,749,423.94 to 54,689 people ($1,129). Zurixx $12,352,681.90 to 25,563 ($483). Benefytt Technologies $99,307,988.46 to 463,629 ($214). Fortnite, meaning Epic Games, $72,003,286.94 to 629,344 ($114). Ring $5,667,294.00 to 117,044 ($48). AT&T $6,291,749.00 to 267,734 ($23.50). Cash rates ranged from 68 to 89 percent, so a meaningful share of people never collected.
Amazon settled with the FTC for $2.5 billion over how Prime was enrolled and cancelled: $1.5 billion for consumer refunds plus a $1 billion civil penalty. The original claim deadline was 27 July 2026, but a revised order raised the cap from $51 to $200 and made all future payments automatic. From 1 October 2026 the FTC says payments extend to millions more people who used between 11 and 20 Prime benefits. This is the clearest example of money that arrives without anybody filing anything.
Active programs as of September 2026 include Amazon, AT&T data throttling, Grubhub, Ring, and University of Phoenix. The list turns over constantly, which is the point: programs open and close without most affected people ever hearing about them.
In the 2024 FTC Annual Report on Refunds to Consumers, the FTC reported that 59 percent of eligible consumers had cashed their check in 2024 cases and expected the average participation rate to exceed 70 percent once all distribution activity is complete. For the 17 cases with completed first-distribution activity in 2024 the participation rate averaged 81 percent, meaning roughly 19 percent of eligible consumers never cashed their check even after the distribution was finished. In cases still in progress, the uncashed share sits higher. This is why timely, active claim-filing matters even for cases where the government already has your address.
Every US state has an unclaimed property law requiring banks, employers, insurers, and utilities to turn over money they cannot return to the owner. The state then holds it, in most states with no deadline to claim.
State treasurers and comptrollers across the country hold roughly $70 billion in money and property they could not return to the owners. It stays there until somebody claims it.
NAUPA's most recent annual report puts the figure at about one in seven. Older sources say one in ten, which is out of date.
State unclaimed property programs paid out $4.49 billion to the people it belonged to during FY2024. This is money that actually reached claimants, not just money sitting in state accounts.
The median is the middle value, so half of all claims paid less than $100 and half paid more. The average is far higher because a small number of very large claims pull it up. Most people who find something find a modest amount. Some find a lot.
US rules require airlines to pay you when they deny you boarding on a flight you had a confirmed seat on. The amount is based on your one-way fare and how late the airline gets you to your destination. On a domestic flight, arriving 1 to 2 hours late pays 200 percent of the fare capped at $1,075, and arriving more than 2 hours late pays 400 percent capped at $2,150. On an international flight the same tiers apply at 1 to 4 hours and more than 4 hours. Nothing is owed if they get you there within an hour. These caps rose from $775 and $1,550 effective 22 January 2025, so any figure citing $1,550 is out of date. This applies to being bumped, not to ordinary delays.
This is a liability limit, not an automatic payout. The airline must cover the proven value of what was in the bag, up to $4,700. You document the contents and the value. The limit rose from $3,800 effective 22 January 2025 and is adjusted for inflation every two years.
The Montreal Convention sets the limit at 1,519 Special Drawing Rights per passenger, raised from 1,288 SDR effective 28 December 2024. Special Drawing Rights are an International Monetary Fund unit whose dollar value floats, so the figure lands near $2,000 rather than at a fixed number. Quote it as approximate.
Significantly delayed means more than 12 hours after a domestic flight arrives at the gate, 15 hours after an international flight of 12 hours or less, or 30 hours after a longer international flight. The refund is only triggered if the passenger files a mishandled baggage report, which is why filing before leaving the airport matters. Refunds go to the original payment method within 7 business days for card payments and 20 days otherwise.
Since the Department of Transportation's 2024 refund rule, US airlines must automatically refund you in cash when they cancel your flight, or when they delay it significantly and you choose not to travel. Significant means 3 hours or more on a domestic flight and 6 hours or more on an international one. Automatic means they have to issue it without you asking, back to your original payment method. You do not have to accept a voucher, and a voucher is usually worth less than the cash you are owed.
This is the part most people get wrong. Unlike Europe, the United States has no federal rule requiring an airline to pay you for arriving late. If your domestic flight runs hours behind and you still fly, federal law entitles you to nothing beyond what the airline chooses to offer. Compensation in the US is tied to being bumped, to cancellations, and to delays where you decide not to travel.
If a plane sits on the ground with you on board, US rules give the airline 3 hours on a domestic flight and 4 hours on an international flight before they have to let passengers off.
European rules set fixed compensation by flight distance: €250 for short flights, €400 for medium, and €600 for long-haul. It applies to flights departing an EU airport on any airline, and to flights arriving in the EU on an EU airline. Airlines do not owe it when the cause was genuinely outside their control. RECHECK BEFORE MID-2027: the Parliament and Council agreed a reform of this regulation in June 2026. Airlines pushed to move the delay threshold from 3 hours to 4 or 6; that was rejected and the 3-hour threshold and the €250 to €600 scale both survived. The new text is not expected to enter force until the second half of 2027, so the figures above are current until then, but this entry must be rechecked before that date.
After leaving the EU, the UK kept the same passenger compensation scheme in its own law, with amounts set in pounds: £220, £350, and £520 by distance.
Canadian rules scale compensation by how late you arrive and whether the airline is large or small. Large carriers pay C$400 for 3 to 6 hours, C$700 for 6 to 9 hours, and C$1,000 for 9 hours or more.
This is the Do Not Call path, which is the one our walkthrough is built around. Two things people get wrong. First, the statute says a court may award UP TO $500 per violation, so it is a ceiling a court can award, not a fixed amount you are owed. Second, and this is the part almost nobody knows: you only get the right to sue after receiving MORE THAN ONE call within any 12-month period from or on behalf of the same entity. A single unwanted sales call to a registered number does not create a private claim under this subsection. That is why logging repeat calls from the same company is the thing that actually matters.
A separate path in the same statute, covering autodialed calls, prerecorded messages, and artificial voice calls to a mobile. Here the statute says $500 per violation without the words 'up to', there is no Do Not Call registration prerequisite, and there is no requirement that it happen more than once. This is the stronger path when the call was an obvious robocall.
The statute says the court 'may, in its discretion' increase the award to not more than three times. Both words matter. It is discretionary, not automatic, and it requires a finding of willfulness or knowledge by the court. Never write copy that assumes a company knew it was breaking the law, and never treat $1,500 as the expected outcome.
A 'telephone solicitation' expressly excludes calls to someone the caller has an established business relationship with, and calls made with prior express consent. Calls from charities, political campaigns, pollsters, and debt collectors are also outside the Do Not Call rules. There is also a safe harbor affirmative defense: a company that shows it had reasonable written compliance procedures and made the call in error can defeat the claim. Copy must never say that any sales call to a registered number is automatically illegal.
In Steidinger v. Blackstone Medical Services, decided 14 July 2026, the Seventh Circuit held that a text message is not a 'telephone call' under § 227(c)(5), reasoning from the 1991 meaning of the words. Inside the Seventh Circuit (Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin) a marketing text cannot support a Do Not Call claim at all, even to a registered number. The Ninth Circuit has gone the other way on the parallel question under § 227(b). Texts may still support a robocall claim under § 227(b)(3) where they were autodialed or prerecorded. Until this resolves, copy must not tell people flatly that an unwanted marketing text is actionable.
Registering your number is free, takes about a minute, and takes effect 31 days later. There is no charge and no renewal needed.
As of 30 September 2025 there were roughly 258.5 million active registrations, with 4.7 million numbers added during that fiscal year alone.
People report unwanted calls to the FTC in the millions every year. Reporting to the FTC does not get you paid, which is the gap Kashfetti fills.
This counts federal cases only. Small-claims filings, which is the route most individuals take, are not tracked nationally and are believed to be far more numerous.
For the 2022 tax year, roughly 1.8 million Texas protests were resolved through informal conferences before ever reaching a formal Appraisal Review Board hearing. Of those informal resolutions, about 67 percent ended in a reduced assessed value. Separately, the Texas Comptroller's Homeowner's Protest Guide reports that 70 to 90 percent of protests are settled at the informal stage across most appraisal districts, so the majority of Texas homeowners who protest never see a formal hearing.
The Texas Comptroller's Homeowner's Protest Guide describes the informal-review process as intended for the average homeowner without a lawyer or hired agent. Statewide participation surveys and appraisal district data both show that a majority of Texas homeowners never file a protest in any given year. Kashfetti uses this guide as the plain-English reference for how a Texas homeowner protest actually works.
This is the observed range on publicly disclosed pricing pages of licensed Texas residential Senior Property Tax Consultants as of September 2026. Lower end around 25 percent from higher-volume firms serving large geographic areas; upper end around 50 percent from full-service firms that also handle formal Appraisal Review Board representation. Some firms use flat retainer or hybrid structures instead. Kashfetti's flat $49 filing fee sits below that industry range because we do not take a percentage of the homeowner's savings.
Before any dollar amount goes on a page, it has to have an entry on this list with a real source behind it. If we cannot point to the law or the agency publication it came from, it does not get published.
Where a figure comes from a private organization rather than a government source, we say so by name on the page rather than presenting it as established fact.
If you spot something on this site you think is wrong or out of date, tell us at hello@kashfetti.com and we will check it and fix it.
This page was last reviewed on 22 September 2026. Laws and compensation amounts change. We recheck these before every product launch and at least twice a year after that.
