Frequently Asked Questions

Companies who make outbound telephone calls or send text messages containing sales or marketing messages must comply with the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry rules and regulations. It is important to note that individual state Do Not Call laws may also apply.

There are over 200 million phone numbers on the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry.

In addition to the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry, there are 11 individual state Do Not Call lists, including Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.

The National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry and most state registries allow you to make calls in response to consumer inquiries. The general Federal Trade Commission (FTC)/Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule is that you have 3 months from the established relationship in which to make such calls.

For more information on this topic, check out our FAQ entries on Established Business Relationships (EBR).

A violation of the Do Not Call (DNC) provision of the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) can be up to $43,792 per call. The fines for a violation of state Do Not Call rules can vary from $100 up to $25,000 per call.

If you are a for-profit seller that directly (or indirectly through vendors) makes outbound calls to sell goods or services to residential telephone numbers, and you do not fall under any applicable exemption, then you must purchase a subscription to the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry.

For more information, click HERE.

First enacted into the federal register in 1995 and amended numerous times since, the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) is the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) primary document for enforcing telemarketing regulations, particularly the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry. According to the FTC’s rule summary, the TSR “requires telemarketers to make specific disclosures of material information; prohibits misrepresentations; sets limits on the times telemarketers may call consumers; prohibits calls to a consumer who has asked not to be called again; and sets payment restrictions for the sale of certain goods and services.”

You only need to register as a telemarketer in the states where you make calls, provided that those states require registration. 32 states and the District of Columbia currently require registration. 

Those states are as follows: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Pennsylvania’s Telemarketer Registration Act provides a useful definition of an Established Business Relationship (EBR): “A prior or existing relationship formed by a voluntary two-way communication between a person or entity and a residential or wireless telephone subscriber, with or without an exchange of consideration, on the basis of an inquiry, application, purchase or transaction by the residential or wireless telephone subscriber regarding products or services offered by such persons of a entity. In regard to an inquiry, the person or entity shall obtain the consent of a residential or wireless telephone subscriber to continue the business relationship beyond the initial inquiry.”

No. Most state telemarketing regulations are written to serve as additional regulations on top of the federal regulations. Some states with Do Not Call (DNC) provisions simply choose to adopt the federal DNC rules rather than create their own rules.

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), “Every Seller should subscribe, pay the appropriate fee, and agree to the certification requirements to receive a Subscription Account Number (SAN) with the National Do Not Call Registry.”

"SAN" stands for Subscription Account Number. If you conduct any form of telemarketing, you are required to purchase a SAN on an annual basis. 

This number can be obtained directly from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) at https://telemarketing.donotcall.gov.

If a seller purchases some sort of telemarketing services from a telemarketer or service provider, the seller must share its Subscription Account Number (SAN) with that provider. But outside of this particular business relationship, nobody may share SANs with anyone else.

You must subscribe to every area code that you will be calling. You do not need to purchase a SAN for area codes that you will not call.

Your first 5 area codes are free. After that, you must pay a per-area-code fee.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is a law passed by Congress in 1991 to protect consumers against unwanted telephone solicitation. The National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry is a specific provision of TCPA enforcement that was created by the Do-Not-Call Implementation Act of 2003.

Further Reading

• What is the TCPA?
• TCPA vs. DNC
• DNC Scrub
• What Are the Penalties Associated with TCPA Violations?

Depending on the particular details of the violations, penalties could be enforced by either the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) or the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). State attorneys general may also bring civil actions on behalf of the residents of their states.

It is possible that a single complaint of a Do Not Call (DNC) violation could trigger enforcement actions from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The federal government’s National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry is managed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under the auspices of the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR). Within that regulatory framework, there are best practices guidelines that, when paired with supporting documentation, allow for the possibility of claiming safe harbor.

As a legal defense, this safe harbor helps to protect companies from inadvertent mistakes that violate DNC rules. It provides a defense against consumer allegations by allowing the calling party to offer proof that they had followed those best practices as defined under the TSR.
In order to invoke a safe harbor defense, a telemarketer is required to provide documentation of the following:

• Policies and Procedures
  The company must have written policies and procedures for complying with DNC list requirements as outlined by the appropriate regulatory agencies.
• Employee Training
  The company must have a program in place for training employees on the aforementioned policies and procedures. There must also be a process for internal monitoring to ensure compliance.
• In-House DNC Suppression List
  For the purposes of call suppression, the company must maintain an internal list of telephone numbers from consumers who directly requested not to be called by the company or any third-party telemarketer.
• National DNC Lists
  The company and third-party telemarketers must access the National DNC Registry no more than 31 days before calling any consumer. The company must maintain records documenting this process of obtaining the list and suppressing phone numbers from its calling file.

The Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) safe harbor has a 3% call abandonment rule. Under the TSR, it is illegal for telemarketers to abandon any outbound call—with an abandoned call being defined as a call that does not connect the consumer to a sales representative within two seconds of the consumer answering the phone. But the TSR also makes some allowances for predictive dialers, which necessarily have a certain amount of abandoned calls because of how they operate.

The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) website explains that the conditions under which a caller would be eligible to claim this safe harbor are if the caller:

• uses technology that ensures abandonment of no more than three percent of all calls answered by a live person, measured over the duration of a single calling campaign, if less than 30 days, or separately over each successive 30-day period or portion thereof that the campaign continues. 
• allows the telephone to ring for 15 seconds or four rings before disconnecting an unanswered call. 
• plays a recorded message stating the name and telephone number of the seller on whose behalf the call was placed whenever a live sales representative is unavailable within two seconds of a live person answering the call. 
• maintains records documenting adherence to the three requirements above.

The main provisions of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) are as follows:

Calling Time Restrictions
Companies can contact residential consumers only between 8:00 AM and 9:00 PM (recipient’s time zone).

Automatic Telephone Dialing Systems (ATDS)
The TCPA restricts autodialed marketing calls and texts to cell phones and other devices where the recipient might be charged for the call without written consent, and non-marketing autodialed calls without prior express consent.

Robocalls
The TCPA does not allow the use of an artificial or prerecorded voice to be used to call a residential landline or wireless number for marketing purposes without prior express written consent.

Identification Requirements
Among other things, the TCPA requires the caller to provide their name, the name of the company on whose behalf they are calling, and a telephone number or address which can be used to contact them again.

National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry
Telemarketers are required to suppress phone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry. Remember that some states have their own local DNC lists as well, separate from the federal list.

Internal Do Not Call List
Companies are required to maintain an internal DNC list of consumers who asked not to be called or texted.

Yes. These exemptions cause much confusion in the industry, leading to devastating fines and settlements. In the face of these exemptions, the vagueness of whether Business-to-Business (B2B) calls are covered under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TPCA) often leads reasonable people to think they are not.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) exempts all solicitation calls between a marketer and a business except marketing of nondurable office or cleaning supplies. This means most B2B are exempt from national Do Not Call (DNC) laws, but not every state exempts B2B calls under state law. Some jurisdictions require B2B marketers to register and place a bond before making calls.

B2B marketing calls are normally exempt from Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) DNC rules. They are also likely to be exempt from the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) DNC rules. However, some federal rules still apply and, as above, some state rules may still apply including laws specific to B2B.

There is an assumption that because real estate agents are independent contractors that Do Not Call (DNC) and Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) regulations do not apply to them.

Big businesses are often seen in the spotlight for being violators of these statutes and individuals may think that their actions will go unnoticed by Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulators—these assumptions are false.

Compliance is mandatory for real estate agents.

As an agent, you may contact a seller marketing a for sale by owner (FSBO) property about your client’s potential interest in purchasing the property, even if that seller’s number is on the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry. The pitfall is that as a buyer’s representative, you may only discuss your client’s interest in the property. You cannot use your client’s interest as a way to solicit the listing. Doing so puts you in violation of DNC regulations.

As an agent, you can call homeowners who originally listed their home with you for up to 18 months after the contract expiration date. Calling during that period of time is allowed as long as the homeowner has not requested that you do not call them.

The Do Not Call (DNC) provisions of the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) are as follows:

Internal Do Not Call List Requirements
The internal DNC list refers to the Entity-Specific Do Not Call Provision. This provision mandates that telemarketers keep and maintain their own do not call list, specific to their organization. When a consumer asks to be put on your do not call list, you should honor that request immediately.

National Do Not Call Registry Requirements
The DNC list is comprised of both landline and wireless numbers and has been open to telemarketers since September 2003. All telemarketers are required to check their lists against the National Do Not Call Registry at least every 31 days.

Misuse of the Do Not Call List
Neither the National Do Not Call Registry nor any internal Do Not Call list may be used for any purpose other than compliance with the TSR’s Do Not Call provisions. This includes attempting to “share” the cost of accessing the national Do Not Call data. All organizations must have their own individual subscription.

Interfering with Someone’s Do Not Call Rights
When a consumer asks to be placed on your internal do not call list, you should accept this request and honor it immediately. Hanging up, refusing to honor or demanding the consumer listens to a sales pitch all constitute violations of this provision. Any organization caught violating this rule will lose any benefit from the TSR’s safe harbor from erroneous violations and may be subject to civil penalties.