Nearly 29 million people who bought an Apple product in the UK could be in line for compensation - about £37 each - after the Competition Appeal Tribunal approved a class action alleging Apple and Amazon struck deals that pushed up prices on the Amazon Store.
The claim centres on agreements Apple and Amazon allegedly entered into in October 2018. Those agreements, the class representative says, kicked almost every independent reseller of Apple products off the Amazon UK Marketplace. Before the agreements, Amazon's own retail arm accounted for 25% of Apple product sales on the platform. Afterwards: 99%. It became, in the Tribunal's words, "virtually the only supplier."
A preliminary analysis found a 4.1% increase in iPhone prices on the Amazon Store relative to recommended retail prices after the agreements took effect.
The class representative estimates damages on the Amazon Store purchases alone at £289 million (assuming 8% interest) or £306 million (at 10%), covering the period from 31 October 2018 through to the predicted pre-trial review date in November 2028. Per customer, that works out to £37 or £39.
The Tribunal, sitting in London, gave the go-ahead for this part of the claim. It refused to certify a much broader claim covering purchases made outside the Amazon Store - at Apple's own shops, on its website, and through other retailers. That Off-Amazon claim rested on the argument that the Amazon Store functions as a pricing reference point for the entire UK Apple retail market. The Tribunal found the theory too speculative and too thinly supported: Amazon's share of all UK Apple product sales was just 1.2% before 2019 and 3.7% since.
This was not the first attempt. The same claim, under a different director, failed at the certification stage in 2024 when the Tribunal found the original class representative lacked sufficient independence. Costs orders from that failure totalled over £3.8 million. The class representative entity then reconstituted itself, appointed a new sole director, and reissued essentially the same claim in December 2025.
Here is where it matters for the litigation funding and insurance market. The funder, Asertis, the after-the-event insurers, and the legal team had all built recovery of their costs from the failed first proceedings into the new funding package. If the class action succeeded, Asertis alone stood to reclaim around £4.5 million in drawn funds from the first attempt, plus a success fee of approximately £26 million calculated on those funds. Total: roughly £30.67 million. Add the legal team's deferred fees and the ATE insurer's claim for reimbursement of adverse costs already paid out, and the combined Riefa-related entitlements exceeded £36 million.
The Tribunal was blunt. It called the inclusion of those costs "manifestly unreasonable and inappropriate." Costs from a failed certification that ended in a final judgment against the class representative could not, the Tribunal ruled, be transferred to a fresh set of proceedings brought by a reconstituted entity. The funder, insurers, and lawyers had all contracted knowing they bore the risk of non-recovery if the first proceedings failed. That risk could not now be shifted onto a new class of 28.9 million consumers.
Within two weeks of the hearing, every stakeholder agreed to give up their first-round entitlements if certification depended on it. The Tribunal noted the speed of that concession - and treated it as further reason to reject the original terms, observing that better terms were evidently available.
The Tribunal also intervened on what the class representative gets paid - a developing area where this ruling goes further than any previous decision.
The class representative's sole director had been charging £200 per hour with no daily cap, projecting total fees of £339,535 through to trial. The Tribunal drew on pension trustee benchmarks, public-sector pay comparators, and a survey of other class representatives to conclude that £170 per hour, capped at £750 per day, was the maximum reasonable rate.
The reasoning went to the heart of how funded class actions work. A class representative is not, the Tribunal said, just another commercial participant in the litigation. The role carries what it called a "public service element" - advocating for a large and largely passive class. Paying commercial rates risks blurring the line between the class representative and the funders and lawyers they are supposed to keep in check.
There is a multiplier effect, too. Under the funding agreement, every pound drawn down for the class representative's fees attracts a success fee for the funder. At the projected timeline, £339,535 in class representative pay would have generated a funder claim of over £1.65 million from the eventual damages pot.
The case will now proceed to trial on the On-Amazon claim. If the class representative wins, compensation would be paid through a direct credit system using Apple and Amazon's own customer data - a method the Tribunal found credible and practical. Permission was also granted to add a claim for an injunction that would require Apple and Amazon to end the alleged agreements.
For after-the-event insurers and litigation funding brokers, the ruling draws a hard line: costs from failed proceedings stay where they fell, and the Tribunal will scrutinise what funders, insurers, and class representatives can take from class action proceeds before a consumer sees a penny.
The underlying claims have not been determined at trial. Apple and Amazon deny that the agreements were unlawful, contending they were pro-competitive and beneficial to consumers. No court has ruled on the merits.
