Plaintiff Ashley G. has initiated a proposed class action lawsuit associated with Airbnb’s practice of allegedly recording phone calls without permission. California has strict laws about how consumers must be notified when a phone conversation is being recorded.

Ashley alleges that recording equipment was used to capture telephone conversations between her and the company without her knowledge or express permission. She believes she is not alone.

Laws in California prohibit one party on a telephone call from intentionally recording that conversation without the consent or knowledge of the other person prior to initiating the recording. Many people who are familiar with policies on recording phone calls will hear an automated message that explains that these phone calls are captured for the purposes of quality or training. Under California law, staying on the line after that message is assumed to be consent.

Recording Lawsuit Details

According to the call recording lawsuit against Airbnb, before 2017 the plaintiff became a host for the defendant and maintained regular contact with the company while serving in that role. According to her recording phone calls allegations, Airbnb allegedly began use of an automated online system sometime before October 2017 in which parties could go online and request to receive a call from a company representative.

At the time of this instituted practice, the person who was requesting a phone call would receive an estimated time to get a call back, and at that point, a call would be placed to the requesting party by the defendant.

This auto dialer system is often used by companies as a way to avoid keeping people on hold for long periods of time while waiting for a representative to pick up the phone.

Ashley says she requested approximately 50 phone calls using this system between October 2017 and 2018. When the return phone calls were placed to the plaintiff’s cellular telephone number, according to the lawsuit, a machine voice would answer and then the plaintiff would be connected to one of the live representatives.

However, according to the recording phone calls complaint, at no time during the placement of the 50 phone calls did Ashley receive notification that the calls were being recorded.

She says in her lawsuit that the online system provided no indication that the calls would be recorded. Some of these conversations were allegedly related to the plaintiff’s status as a host and sometimes included private financial information, she says.

Ashley says in her lawsuit that she was shocked to discover that the company was allegedly recording phone calls without her consent, and she argues that the company violated existing California laws in failing to inform her. Moreover, according to the plaintiff, recording phone calls without telling her about the practice of doing so caused her to reveal information about herself and her guests that she would not otherwise have shared if she knew that the calls were being recorded and possibly stored.

Call recording laws in the state of California are more stringent than the rest of the country. A number of companies have paid millions in settlements for call recording violations.

Ashley’s Recording Phone Calls Lawsuit is Case No. BC707653, filed in the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles.