2014 Red Bull Refund Settlement

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Overview

2014 Red Bull Refund Settlement refers to an online initiative started by Red Bull, the American energy drink company, to grant anyone who had purchased one of their energy drinks a small portion of funds from a class action lawsuit brought against the company.

Background

On July 31st, 2014, Red Bull reached a settlement^[6] of $13 million in a class action lawsuit brought against them by Benjamin Careathers, who alleged the drink's slogan "Red Bull gives you wings" and other assertions about it improving the drinker's performance were false, as he had not experienced those effects even after drinking Red Bull for over a decade.

On October 8th, Buzzfeed^[2] published a post titled "If You Bought A Red Bull In The Last 12 Years They Owe You Money -- Here’s The Easy Way To Get It" which explained any Red Bull consumer who had bought the drink between 2012 and October 3rd, 2014, was eligible to sign up to receive $10 (or $15 in Red Bull merchandise) from the settlement. They also included a link to the site^[3] where they could sign up to receive the money, as long as they sign up before May 2nd, 2015.

Notable Developments

Site Crash

Within 24 hours the Buzzfeed article gained over 4.9 million views. The settlement was covered by several other websites the same day including Life Hacker^[4] and USA Today.^[5] On October 9th, TIME^[1] reported that the surge in traffic had caused the settlement site to crash, and went on to explain that because Red Bull had only committed to pay out $13 million to its customers, it was likely that money would be spread so thin between respondents each person's portion of the money could be only $3. The same day Buzzfeed included an update to their original article which featured alternate ways of contacting Red Bull to sign up for a piece of the settlement:

"- By mail: Class Action Settlement Administrator at Energy Drink Settlement, c/o GCG, P.O. Box 35123, Seattle, WA 98124-5123
- By fax: (844) 553-1373
- By email: energydrinksettlement@gcginc.com"