Uber Sued Over Unwanted Political Messages

Uber has been hit with a potential class-action lawsuit for allegedly violating federal restrictions on robo-texting by sending political messages to users in Austin, Texas.

In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Austin on Wednesday, city resident Melissa Cubria alleges that the company sent SMS messages urging voters to repeal a law requiring ride-sharing companies to conduct background checks for drivers. Uber and Lyft reportedly have sent more than $8 million to campaign for the repeal.

The measure will be on the ballot on May 7, but the city also held an early voting period from April 25 through May 3. Cubria alleges that she received several SMS messages in the days before the close of early voting.

Cubria alleges that the SMS campaign violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits companies from using automated dialers to send text messages without obtaining the recipients' consent. That law provides for damages ranging from $500 to $1,500 per message.

The complaint says the messages carried greetings from the names of different people -- like "Jeff at Uber," and "Cameron at Uber" -- and indicated that they came from different phone numbers. But she says the substance of them was otherwise the same. They allegedly said: "Ridesharing is on the ballot & early voting ends tomorrow! Can we count on your vote for Prop 1 to keep Uber in Austin?"

Federal law only restricts SMS messages that are sent via autodialers, and not those that are sent manually, according to the complaint. But Cubria argues that the messages she received have the "strong indicia" of robo-texts.

For instance, she alleges that even though the messages provided phone numbers for the purported senders, dialing those numbers yielded only a computer-generated message.

"No human being ever answers calls made to the phone numbers," the complaint alleges. "There is no busy signal heard in response to any call to their phone numbers, and none of them have any voice mail, either. Instead, all phone calls ... are answered with the identical computer generated message, stating only, in a feminine voice: 'We’re sorry -- an application error has occurred. Goodbye.'"

Uber hasn't yet responded to MediaPost's request for comment.

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