• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, 5 hours ago

Temu, the ecommerce app, has been accused of “modern spam abuse” in a class action lawsuit in California. 

The complaint, filed on Monday with the LA County Superior Court, accuses the China-based company of using false subject lines, misleading headers and spoofed domains, according to Courthouse News Service.

The sole plaintiff listed, Dallas Pottish, alleges he was sent a promotion from a nonsensical email address.

“Confused, and believing that the email might be from a legitimate source rather than an anonymous mass marketing campaign, plaintiff opened the email,” the complaint states.

A typical subject line would be “$0.01 False Nails — Ends Soon,” the suit alleges.

“No such product is actually sold at that price, as plaintiff confirmed by scouring the website,” the complaint continues, according to Courthouse News Service. “The phrase ‘Ends Soon’ reinforces the deception by creating artificial urgency, implying a limited-time promotion that requires immediate action, when in reality no genuine time-limited sale exists."

On the one hand, this seems like just one more in a long line of subject-line lawsuits against companies, many claiming there was a false sense of urgency. It has to gain class action status to have a chance and that may not happen, although California is a tough state for marketers. 

Emails, no matter how legitimate, can annoy people. That's a particular vulnerability of the business. And. there are many lawyers ready to take advantage of this state of affairs. 

Temu has been the subject of a variety of legal actions, including one that almost seems like an international incident., In February, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Temu operator PDD Holdings, Inc. and WhaleCo Inc.,”for unlawfully deceiving consumers while covertly harvesting Texans’ personal data and exposing it to the Chinese Communist Party.”

Last September, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission announced settlement in a case involving alleged violations of the INFORM Consumers Act.  Whaleco Inc. (Temu). The company was to pay $2 million in civil penalties to resolve allegations that it failed to disclose information for high-volume third-party sellers, including seller addresses.”

“The Justice Department is committed to ensuring American consumers have information about third-party sellers online and mechanisms to report suspicious marketplace behavior,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, in a statement at that time.  “The Department will continue to ensure that online marketplaces follow the INFORM Consumers Act.”