Calling and texting responsibilities

Consent

Texts, and calls that use an artificial or prerecorded voice (including a prerecorded voicemail message), generally need the person’s prior consent — and for marketing, prior express written consent. Consent belongs to a specific phone number and can be withdrawn at any time, in any reasonable way.

Do Not Call

Anyone who tells you to stop must not be called or texted again. Separately, the National Do Not Call Registry and several state registries restrict telephone solicitations to listed numbers. Whether a call offering to buy someone’s property is a “solicitation” is a legal question that is not settled everywhere. If the registry applies to you, you need your own registry subscription and a scrub process.

Calling hours

Federal rules allow solicitation calls only between 8am and 9pm in the called person’s local time. Some states are stricter. Florida’s FTSA, for example, limits calls to 8am to 8pm and to three calls in 24 hours to the same person on the same subject. Other states restrict Sundays and holidays.

Identification

Say who you are, the business you are calling for, and why, at the start of the call. Caller ID must show a real number that belongs to you and can be called back. Do not disguise who is calling.

Recording

Some states, including Florida and California, require every party on a call to consent before it is recorded. Where you call people in those states, assume you need everyone’s consent.

Opt-outs and registration

Honor opt-outs promptly and keep a record of them. Business texting in the U.S. runs through carrier registration (A2P 10DLC), and some states require telemarketers or telephone sellers to register or hold a bond before calling their residents.

1. A do-not-call list that nobody can override

When a caller marks a call “asked not to be called,” or the person texts STOP, the number goes on your account’s do-not-call list and the lead is marked do-not-call. That list is checked when a call starts, again at the phone carrier just before the call connects, and before every text. There is no setting that turns it off.

2. Registry flags, scrubbed by default

Phone numbers found through skip tracing carry the data provider’s federal Do Not Call registry flag. By default the dialer refuses registry-flagged numbers. An account owner or admin can change that in Settings. The flags come from the provider and can be missing or out of date; the product does not check state registries or run a scrub against your own registry subscription.

3. Calling hours

You set a calling window and calling days; the default is 8am to 9pm, Monday to Saturday — the federal window, not Florida’s narrower one, so change it if stricter rules apply to you.

• Texts are refused outside the window in the lead’s own time zone.
• Calls: the dialer blocks callers from dialing outside the window, measured in the market time zone set for each user. Owners and admins see a warning but can still dial.
• The product does not count calls per person per day or know about public holidays.

4. No text without recorded consent

A text will not send to a number unless consent is recorded for that exact number: the caller ticks “they asked me to text them” at the end of a call, the person ticks the consent box on your website form, or the person texts you first. Landlines are refused. The first text to any number adds “Reply STOP to opt out.” Texts are written and sent one at a time by a person; there is no bulk texting.

5. STOP handling

A reply of STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END or QUIT — or a phrase like “remove me” or “stop calling” — adds the number to your do-not-call list, marks the lead, clears its text consent and stops any follow-up sequence for that lead. HELP gets an automatic reply with your contact details. A person who later texts START is opted back in.

6. Recording, off unless you turn it on

Call recording is off by default. If you turn it on for outgoing calls, the person who answers hears “This call may be recorded for quality and training purposes” before you are connected. Recording incoming calls is a separate setting and plays the same notice to the caller first. The notice is not the same as getting consent; whether it is enough in an all-party-consent state is for your attorney.

7. Your own caller ID

Calls go out from phone numbers that belong to your account, checked against the lines the account actually holds, and people who call those numbers back reach your team.