Published
September 10, 2026
Small businesses that auto-renewed a Dun & Bradstreet subscription above list price between April 2022 and December 2023, or that bought a D&B product over the phone on or after April 6, 2022, are owed refunds under a court order entered in January 2026. There is no claim form and no settlement website — D&B has to find those customers in its own records and pay them directly.
What the Court Order Requires
Dun & Bradstreet, the Jacksonville-based business credit data company, is under a stipulated order entered on January 14, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida requiring it to refund customers and pay a civil penalty. The case, United States v. Dun & Bradstreet, Inc., No. 3:25-cv-01158, was filed by the Justice Department on a referral from the Federal Trade Commission.The complaint alleged that D&B violated a 2022 FTC order in three ways: by sending some customers renewal notices that did not accurately state the product's list price before an automatic renewal, by failing to keep its sales staff from telling prospective customers that buying a paid product would help improve their business credit score, and by failing to retain the voice recordings of oral offers that the 2022 order required it to keep. D&B neither admitted nor denied the allegations, which have not been proven in court.
The money splits in two. The stipulated order enters a civil penalty judgment of $2,063,090 payable to the Treasurer of the United States within 14 days — the Justice Department's announcement gives that figure as $2,063,000 — and a separate equitable monetary judgment of $2,785,786 that D&B satisfies not by writing a check to the government but by refunding its own customers. Counting roughly $924,590 D&B had already refunded before the order, the total that has to reach customers is $3,710,376.29.
Status
Order Entered January 14, 2026
United States v. Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. · M.D. Fla., Jacksonville Division · refund program run by the company
Refunds to Customers
$3,710,376.29
Includes about $924,590 already refunded · a separate $2,063,090 civil penalty goes to the U.S. Treasury
Can I Claim?
No Claim Form — D&B Must Pay Directly
Refunds arrive as a credit to the payment method on file, or as a mailed check · anything left undistributed goes to the Treasury as an added penalty
Who Is Owed a Refund
The order defines "Eligible Customers" as two groups, and a business can fall into either one:• Overcharged auto-renewals. Customers who auto-renewed a Dun & Bradstreet product at a rate higher than the list price between April 6, 2022 and December 31, 2023.
• Telesales purchases. Customers who bought a Dun & Bradstreet product from the company on a telesales call on or after April 6, 2022, through the date the order was entered.
The two groups are paid on different math. An overcharged auto-renewal customer gets the difference between the list price and what they were actually charged, minus anything D&B had already refunded them — with the whole group capped at $1,210,376.29, a figure that includes the approximately $924,590 in refund checks D&B says it sent voluntarily in April 2024. Telesales purchasers split a flat $2,500,000 evenly among however many of them D&B identifies, so the per-customer amount falls as the identified group grows.
Identification is the company's job, not the customer's. The order tells D&B to identify eligible customers and their contact information to the extent that information is in its possession, and it keeps that obligation open for a full year after the order issued — a "Redress Period" that runs to January 14, 2027. Customers found late still get paid, within 30 days of being identified.
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How the Refunds Arrive — and the 180-Day Check Warning
Where D&B has a credit card or other payment method on file, the refund is applied to it. Where it does not, or where a credit is not practicable, the order requires a first-class mailing on company letterhead containing a refund check and nothing else. The envelope has to carry the words ABOUT YOUR PURCHASE FROM DUN & BRADSTREET, and the letter has to say the refund is being sent to address the company's obligations under a consent order with the Federal Trade Commission. Mail returned as undeliverable has to be re-sent to a corrected address within 15 days.The deadline that matters to a recipient is on the check itself. The order requires each check to state, clearly and conspicuously, that it should be cashed or deposited within 180 days, and it lets D&B void any check not negotiated 187 days after it was mailed. D&B had 180 days from January 14, 2026 — until roughly July 13, 2026 — to notify and refund the customers it had identified by then, so checks mailed at the end of that window start going stale around January 2027. A business that set one aside as junk mail still has time to look.
Money that never reaches a customer does not stay with the company. Under the order, whatever part of the $3,710,376.29 is not distributed has to be wired to the government within 45 days of the end of the refund program and deposited as an additional civil penalty. D&B also has to report the program's results under penalty of perjury — how many customers it identified, what it calculated as due to each, how many checks it mailed, and how many were cashed.
What the FTC Says Changed at D&B
The 2022 order this case enforces came out of an earlier FTC action over how D&B sold and corrected small business credit reports. It required the company to tell customers certain material facts before automatically renewing a paid subscription, barred it from using an automatic renewal to move a subscriber onto a more expensive product they had not ordered, barred misrepresentations about any product's price or features, and required it to keep recordings of its telemarketing calls.Alongside the money, the FTC says D&B agreed to modifications of that 2022 order: keeping a third-party quality assurance provider in place to track whether telemarketing staff are making misrepresentations, running a comprehensive compliance program, having company leadership certify annually that D&B is complying, and notifying the Commission within 60 days of any failure to comply involving certain auto-renewals, problems updating trade data, or record retention. The Commission vote to refer the complaint and approve the stipulated order was 3-0.
The underlying subject is a business credit file, which is why the claim the FTC singled out matters: the complaint alleges D&B employees told prospective customers that buying a fee-based product would help improve their business's credit score. Paid products are a recurring pitch in small business credit reporting, and this is the second time the FTC has taken issue with how D&B described what they do. For consumers, the closest parallel on the personal-credit side is the Equifax credit score error settlement; on the auto-renewal side, D&B joins a long list of companies facing subscription renewal claims.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a claim form?
No. Dun & Bradstreet has to identify eligible customers from its own records and refund them directly. There is no settlement website, no administrator and nothing to file.Which customers qualify?
Customers who auto-renewed a D&B product above list price between April 6, 2022 and December 31, 2023, and customers who bought a D&B product on a telesales call on or after April 6, 2022 through January 14, 2026.How much is a refund worth?
Overcharged auto-renewal customers get the difference between list price and what they paid, less any prior refund, from a pool capped at $1,210,376.29. Telesales purchasers split $2,500,000 evenly, so the amount depends on how many are identified.What if the check was never cashed?
The checks carry a notice to cash or deposit within 180 days, and the order lets D&B void one 187 days after mailing. Undistributed money goes to the U.S. Treasury as an additional civil penalty rather than back to the company.Sources
• Justice Department — Dun & Bradstreet to Pay $5.7M to Resolve Alleged Violations of an FTC Order• FTC — Dun & Bradstreet Agrees to Pay $5.7 Million to Resolve Alleged Violations of FTC Order
• Stipulated Order for Civil Penalty, Monetary Judgment, and Injunctive Relief (PDF)
• FTC — Case Page, United States v. Dun & Bradstreet, Inc.
For more class actions keep scrolling below.
Status
Stipulated order entered January 14, 2026
Refunds
$3,710,376.29 to eligible D&B customers (no claim form)
Civil Penalty
$2,063,090 (paid to the U.S. Treasury)
Case Title
United States v. Dun & Bradstreet, Inc.
Case Number
3:25-cv-01158 (M.D. Fla., Jacksonville Division)
FTC Matter No.
C-4761
Official Website
FTC Case Page — Dun & Bradstreet
