Telephone Consumer Protection Act

Some general rules

  • Require anyone making a telephone solicitation call to your home to provide his or her name, the name of the person or entity on whose behalf the call is being made, and a telephone number or address at which that person or entity can be contacted.
  • Prohibit telephone solicitation calls to your home before 8 am or after 9 pm.
  • Require telemarketers to comply immediately with any do-not-call request you make during a call.All non-emergency robocalls, both telemarketing and informational, require a consumer’s permission to be made to a wireless phone. These calls can include political, polling, and other non-telemarketing robocalls.
  • Robocalls either use a technology with the capacity to autodial or utilize a pre-recorded or artificial voice.
  • Calls and text messages have the same protection under FCC rules.
  • Consumers can take back their permission to be called or texted in any reasonable way. A calling company cannot require someone to fill out a form and mail it in as the only way to revoke consent.
  • An existing commercial relationship does not constitute permission to be robocalled or texted.
  • Consent to be called or texted cannot be a condition of a sale or other commercial transaction.
  • Callers are allowed to call a wrong number only once before updating their list. This most commonly comes up when one person consented to be called or texted but then they gave up that number and it was reassigned to someone else. Callers have resources available to them to help them know ahead of time if a number’s “owner” has changed.
  • Urgent calls or texts specifically for health or fraud alerts may be allowed without prior consent. They must be free, and consumers can say “stop” at any time.
  • Congress gave consumers a private right of action against callers that violate the TCPA. The Commission has also enforces the rules proactively, often stemming from consumer complaints.

 

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