Published
September 18, 2026
Temu users who signed up for a privacy arbitration claim may be asked to schedule a phone or video call with Temu, because Temu’s Terms of Use make that call a condition of arbitration and a federal judge enforced it in March 2026. There is no Temu class action settlement, claim form or payout.
Why Do Temu Claimants Have to Schedule a Phone Call?
Temu’s Terms of Use say that before either side starts an arbitration, the user and Temu must hold an “informal dispute resolution conference” by telephone or videoconference. For two years, the lawyers organizing thousands of Temu privacy claims argued that their clients should not have to do that one at a time. On March 9, 2026, a federal judge in Brooklyn disagreed. In McMahan v. Whaleco, Inc., the court ordered Temu to arbitrate with the five claimants who had personally attended a conference and refused to do the same for more than 6,500 others who had not.The result is that an individual Temu claim cannot move into arbitration until that claimant has personally taken part in a call. Claimants who signed up for a Temu privacy claim, in some cases as far back as early 2024, are the people who need to book one before their claim can proceed.
Is There a Temu Class Action Settlement or Claim Form?
No. As of September 2026 there is no approved Temu consumer class action settlement, no claim form, no settlement administrator and no payout deadline. The calls belong to individual arbitration claims, which are private one-on-one proceedings, not a class case with a shared fund. A person who never retained a lawyer or sent Temu a written dispute notice has no call to schedule and nothing to file. The Temu class action overview tracks the government cases and private lawsuits separately.Free settlement alerts
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What Are the Temu Privacy Claims About?
Temu is operated in the United States by Whaleco Inc., a subsidiary of PDD Holdings. According to the court’s order, the arbitration demands in McMahan allege that Temu unlawfully intercepted, collected, used and shared consumers’ personal information when they visited its website, used its mobile app and subscribed to its marketing messages. The demands cite the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act and Video Privacy Protection Act, New York’s consumer protection statutes, state wiretapping laws, state unfair and deceptive practices laws, and breach of contract.Those are unproven allegations. No arbitrator or court has ruled on whether any of them is true, and the March 2026 order dealt only with procedure. Similar accusations appear in government lawsuits, including a June 2024 complaint by the Arkansas attorney general alleging that the Temu app was built to avoid security review and to reach data on users’ phones without permission. Temu responded to that lawsuit by saying, “We categorically deny the allegations and will defend ourselves.”
Text message and marketing email cases against Temu are a different track. Those are court cases brought under telemarketing and anti-spam laws, such as the California lawsuit over Temu’s marketing emails, and they are not the claims the March 2026 order addressed.
What Do Temu’s Terms of Use Require Before Arbitration?
Section 19 of Temu’s Terms of Use is an arbitration agreement with a class action waiver. Users who did not opt out within 30 days of first becoming subject to it agreed to resolve disputes individually before the American Arbitration Association instead of in court or in a class action. Section 19.2 adds a step that comes first:- The party with the dispute sends the other side a written notice that identifies the account holder, any lawyer, and the dispute.
- The user and Temu then “personally meet and confer telephonically or via videoconference” in a good-faith effort to resolve it.
- A lawyer may join, but the user must participate too.
- The current Terms, last updated November 7, 2025, say each conference is individualized, so people with separate disputes cannot share one call unless everyone agrees.
- Statutes of limitations and filing-fee deadlines are paused while the process runs.
- The conference is a condition that must be fulfilled before arbitration begins, and any fight over whether it was fulfilled goes to a court, not an arbitrator.
If the dispute is not resolved within 60 days after the notice is received, either side may take it to binding arbitration. The court described the requirement as mutual, since Temu would have to follow the same steps if it brought a claim against a user.
What Did the Court Decide in March 2026?
The order, by U.S. District Judge Margo K. Brodie of the Eastern District of New York, lays out how the dispute reached court:- Starting January 22, 2024, claimants’ counsel sent Temu dispute notices for 9,937 people and scheduled more than 9,600 individual conferences across 58 days, at 20 minutes each.
- On February 19, 2024, the first day, five conferences took place by video. Claimants’ counsel then canceled the rest.
- Beginning March 27, 2024, counsel filed 15,648 arbitration demands with the American Arbitration Association, and later filings brought the total above 20,000. Temu objected that almost none of the claimants had held a conference.
- On March 21, 2025, the five claimants and 6,509 others asked the federal court to order Temu into arbitration.
The claimants argued that one-at-a-time conferences were unconscionable and worked as a bottleneck, that Temu had waived the requirement by acting in bad faith, that more calls would be futile, and that they had substantially complied because their lawyers attended on everyone’s behalf. The court rejected each argument. It found that the requirement applies equally to both sides, that five conferences among nearly 10,000 claimants could not show further calls would be pointless, and that an express condition in a contract has to be performed literally under New York law. Attendance through a lawyer did not count.
The court granted the petition for the five claimants who attended and dismissed it for everyone else “because they have not completed the IDR Process.” The order does not decide whether Temu violated any privacy law, and it does not stop the remaining claimants from completing a conference and filing afterward. Publicly available docket entries show no appeal as of September 18, 2026.
What Happens on the Temu Call?
The public record describes the calls only in outline. No transcripts were filed, and the two sides gave the court conflicting accounts of the five conferences that took place.The claimants said Temu sent its lawyers and a customer service representative with no authority to resolve anything, used the sessions to gather information, offered only boilerplate statements, and raised the prospect of sanctions. Temu said the claimants gave no substantive information about their concerns and used the five sessions as a pretext to cancel the rest. The court found that neither side had submitted evidence of bad faith. It added that the supposed threat of sanctions appeared to be a reference to the attorneys’ fees clause in the Terms, which the claimants had not challenged.
Temu’s own description, as quoted in the order, is that the requirement amounts to “a short phone call to see if the parties can reach an agreement.” Temu told the court that a claimant can satisfy it by showing up and listening, may ask Temu questions, and may decline to answer questions that intrude on litigation strategy. Temu also said that scores of other consumers had completed conferences and gone on to file arbitration claims, and that some calls ended in informal resolutions.
The order does not describe a script, does not say what Temu asks to confirm a claimant’s identity, and does not record any settlement offer or dollar amount. Accounts of specific offers made on these calls are not documented in the court record.
Is a Temu Call Notice Legit or a Scam?
The legal requirement is genuine, so a scheduling request is not suspicious simply because it mentions a call with Temu. Whether a particular email or text is authentic depends on where it came from:- A genuine request traces back to something the claimant did, either signing an agreement with a law firm to pursue a Temu claim or personally sending Temu a dispute notice. A message about a Temu claim the recipient never signed up for has no such origin.
- The safest way to confirm a request is to contact the law firm through the details on the signed agreement or the firm’s earlier emails, not through links or reply addresses in the new message.
- The conference is a conversation. Nothing in the Terms calls for a fee to schedule it, and nothing about it requires bank account numbers, card numbers, account passwords or one-time verification codes.
- A message promising a guaranteed Temu payout or pointing to a Temu settlement claim form describes something that does not exist.
General warning signs for impostor messages are covered in the guide to spotting a scam.
What Happens After the Call?
A completed conference satisfies the condition whether or not anything is resolved. The court noted that “resolution is not required,” and the Terms let either party start arbitration once 60 days have passed from the notice without a resolution. Whether to accept anything offered on a call is the claimant’s decision and a question for the claimant’s own attorney.A claimant who skips the call is in the position of the more than 6,500 people in McMahan: under the ruling, the arbitration claim cannot go forward.
Arbitration itself is a separate, slower stage. The current Terms group similar demands filed with the help of the same law firm into batches of 100, each decided by a single arbitrator, once 25 or more arrive within 30 days. A claimant still has to prove the claim, Temu still denies it, and no ruling on the merits of these Temu privacy arbitrations has been made public. How mass arbitration differs from a class action explains much of the delay: every claim is its own case.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Temu class action phone call real?
The requirement is real. Temu’s Terms of Use make a phone or video conference between Temu and each claimant a condition that must be met before arbitration, and a federal judge in New York enforced that condition on March 9, 2026. Whether a particular message is genuine is a separate question: a scheduling request should trace back to a law firm the claimant actually signed up with, or to a dispute notice the claimant sent to Temu.
Is there a Temu class action settlement or claim form?
No. As of September 2026 there is no approved Temu consumer class action settlement, no claim form, no settlement administrator and no payout deadline. The phone calls are part of individual arbitration claims, not a class settlement.
Why can’t Temu users just join a class action in court?
Temu’s Terms of Use contain an arbitration agreement and a class action waiver. Users who did not opt out within 30 days of becoming subject to the agreement are generally limited to individual arbitration before the American Arbitration Association. Courts have sent some Temu app-user cases to arbitration on that basis.
Can a lawyer take the Temu call for the claimant?
No. The Terms allow counsel to join the conference, but the claimant must also participate. In McMahan v. Whaleco, the court rejected the argument that thousands of claimants had attended through their lawyers and held that each claimant has to take part in an individual conference.
Does a claimant have to accept an offer made on the Temu call?
No. The court noted that the conference is a good-faith attempt to resolve the dispute and that a resolution is not required. Under the Terms, if the dispute is not resolved within 60 days after Temu receives the claimant’s written notice, either side may move to binding arbitration. Whether to accept any offer is the claimant’s own decision and a question for the claimant’s attorney.
How much is a Temu privacy claim worth?
No amount has been established. No arbitrator or court ruling on the merits of these Temu privacy claims has been made public, Temu denies the allegations, and completing the call does not guarantee any payment. Figures circulating online are estimates based on statutory damages that a claimant would still have to win.
Sources
• Memorandum & Order, McMahan v. Whaleco, Inc., No. 1:25-cv-01590 (E.D.N.Y. March 9, 2026)• CourtListener docket for McMahan v. Whaleco, Inc.
• Temu Terms of Use, Section 19 (last updated November 7, 2025)
• Bloomberg Law report on the March 2026 ruling
• Arkansas Attorney General announcement of the June 2024 Temu lawsuit
• Fashion Dive report on the Arkansas lawsuit and Temu’s response
About This Page
OpenClassActions.com is a consumer news and information site. It is not a law firm, a settlement administrator or a government agency, and it does not represent claimants in Temu arbitrations. This page is general information, not legal advice. Anyone with a pending Temu claim should direct questions about the call, any offer and next steps to the attorney handling that claim.
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