Telephone Consumer Protection Act Compliance

Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) regulates who can use your phone number and for what purposes. If you are a company that uses phone numbers for marketing purposes, understanding this legislation is a key factor in your company’s success. Definitions of some crucial definitions according to this regulation are provided:

• Telemarketing: initiation of a telephone call or message for the purpose of encouraging the purchase or rental of property, goods or services
• Autodialer or ATDS: equipment which has the capacity to produce telephone numbers using a random or sequential number generator and dial such numbers
• Robocall: a telephone call that utilizes an autodialer to transmit a prerecorded telemarketing message
• Established Business Relationship (EBR): a relationship between a person or entity and business subscriber

The Regulation

As of October 2013, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) changed a few critical details of the TCPA. One change is prior express consent is required before any autodial or prerecorded telemarketing calls or text messages to wireless phone numbers.  Consent must be unambiguous so the consumer knows they will be receiving future calls with prerecorded messages. Also, a regulation that customers can opt-out of future telephone calls. Any other calls such as debt collection, airline notification, bank account fraud, school and university closings/notifications, research or survey calls, and wireless usage notifications can be made through landline numbers and only to wireless phones when there is either written or oral consent from the wireless consumer.

Fines

TCPA violation fines range anywhere from $500-$1,500 per call or text. The FCC also has the ability to fine violations that go against the TPCA and FCC rules.  A second, higher citation can be issued after an initial citation is imposed. Companies such as Domino’s, Bank of America, Sallie Mae, and Capital One have paid fines ranging $10 million- $75 million. Sprint was fined $7.5 million for failing to honor consumers’ do not call and do not text preferences.  In addition to the fine, they were required to report any non-compliance for two years after this incident in 2009.

To avoid fines, processing is available to authenticate names, phone numbers, and consent dates.  This processing outputs simple codes to make it easy to see when autodialing isn’t a risk.

How we can help

In just one year, telephone data can change immensely. In one year, 2.8% of phones are invalid, 500,000 ported phone numbers change, and 50 Million phone number change.  It is crucial to authenticate the consumer name, phone number and consent date. We validate phone type, ported phones, and phone owners. It is important to know of any changes with ported phones. This is when a phone number may have recently been switched from a landline to VoIP or wireless. In addition to keeping your data in compliance with TCPA regulations, it is also important to keep your data up to date. FreeNCOA.com can provide additional points of contact to re-establish communication with consumers. We can also offer further insight into your data and customer needs to create models, personas, and segmentation opportunities.

Within our processing, we have a DNC scrub so that we can label that data that you should not call. We are Consumer Identity Management Experts, 100% focused on the most current and accurate consumer identity information. Using as little as a single identifier, we deliver complete identity profiles, score, and attributes.  IMDataCenter has an expansive data and network, leveraging 97,500,00 daily updates across our master identity repository. We have 30+ years of historical identity assets; unique access to offline deterministic referential data sources.

Let us solve your data needs today.

data processing, Phone Appends