Pa. Resident Sues to Halt Unwanted Texts From N.Y. Hyundai Dealership

Weiharik Garcia received at least two automated text messages March 19 from South Shore Hyundai, a dealership in Valley Stream, New York, soliciting her to buy, sell or trade in a car, in “plain violation” of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, alleged her class action Thursday (docket 2:24-cv-01305) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The “hexadecimal codes” associated with the text messages indicate that they were sent using an automatic telephone dialing system, which randomly generates phone numbers by itself, “and also uses a prerecorded, artificial voice to generate message content,” it said. South Shore “had no earthly clue who it was sending automated messages to” because the Pennsylvania resident doesn’t drive and isn’t named May, the person to whom the messages were addressed, said the complaint. Further supporting the fact that a random or sequential telephone number generator was used to produce the phone number to text, South Shore sent its text messages to 484-area code numbers in southeast Pennsylvania, despite the dealership being located in New York, “which is quite the hike for anyone to go there from Philly,” it said. The unwanted text messages were “non-consensual encounters,” it said. Garcia and members of the class have been harmed by South Shore’s acts “because their privacy has been violated and they were annoyed and harassed,” it said.