The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) restricts telemarketing activities and allows consumers to sue violators. The law covers unsolicited advertisements, automatic dialers, and text messages. Telemarketers must identify themselves and comply with do not call lists. The FCC administers the TCPA and consumers can file complaints. Exemptions include established business relationships, non-profit organizations, and non-commercial purposes. Violators can be fined up to $1,500 US.
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is an act of Congress passed in 1991 to address consumer concerns about the practice of telemarketing in the United States. Under the TCPA, the activities of sellers are restricted and consumers have the right to sue sellers who violate the TCPA. If a consumer’s case is found valid, the offender can be fined up to $1,500 US, with the fine going to the consumer.
The provisions of the TCPA cover things like sending unsolicited advertisements to fax machines, the use of automatic dialers, artificial and recorded voice messages, and text messages sent to cell phones. The law is designed to protect consumers from the intrusion of unwanted solicitations, as well as the expense that can sometimes be associated with such solicitations. Under the TCPA, people making commercial calls, faxes, or texts must identify themselves and the company they work for. Identifying information should also include the contact information of the company on behalf of which the call is being made.
If a consumer expressly requests to be removed from the call list, that request must be complied with. Consumers can also list home phones and personal cell phones in the national call do not list, a list distributed to vendors. Business lines may be included in this list, but telemarketing calls to businesses are not strictly illegal except under certain circumstances.
Telemarketers may also not call during certain hours and may not use autodialers and recorded messages to emergency numbers or to numbers that incur cost to the consumer, such as cell phones. There are, of course, some exemptions to the TCPA. If there is an established business relationship, unsolicited calls are not illegal, and likewise if calls are made on behalf of a non-profit organization or for non-commercial purposes, which allows pollsters and political campaigners to make such calls.
TCPA is administered by the FCC, which has a complaints management system in place. Consumers who believe the TCPA has been violated can fill out a form with their telephone number, time of call and caller ID. The FCC also requests additional information that helps them trace the entity that made the unsolicited call, such as caller ID readings.
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