YES, YOUR TCPA CONSENTS ARE ABOUT TO EXPIRE!: Every Marketing Contact and Lead You Have is About to Expire– Here’s Why You Can’t Keep Calling Your Old Leads After January 27, 2025

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True story.

I had a Plaintiff’s lawyer tell me the other day that I should “shut up” about one-to-one consent.

In his view, if I stopped talking about it then small businesses wouldn’t know about the rule change and that would create a lot more lawsuits and, therefore, I would make a lot more money down the line.

Yeah. Fat chance.

I’m in this business to protect people. Sure I like to get paid (well) for my services but that doesn’t mean I am going to sit back and let people get destroyed in avoidable TCPA lawsuits where I can help. Especially when there are so few resources out there for small businesses to learn about the impact of this rule.

So here’s my latest effort to protect everyone to my own personal pecuniary loss. Haha.

Everyone knows that January 27, 2025 is the effective date for the FCC’s new one-to-one consent rule.

But not everyone seems to understand the extremely dire consequences of that rule for your existing lead portfolio and pipeline.

As a reminder, on January 27, 2025 the FCC’s new one-to-one rule goes into effect. This means 47 CFR 64.1200(f)(9) will be modified to change the definition of express written consent to require webforms to “clearly and conspicuously authorizes no more than one identified seller” to make telemarketing calls.

While this rule change has companies rushing to comply, the full impact of the rule is not being absorbed by many of the folks I am talking to.

Here’s the issue.

The FCC’s ruling is a formal rule and not an interpretative declaration. This means the rule is prospective only and not retroactive. Great.

But what is confusing people is that many seem to think the prospective nature of the rule means that their old leads can still be called after January 27, 2025 so long as they were compliant with the law at the time the lead was purchased. And that is COMPLETELY WRONG.

The rule’s prospective effect means it only applies to CALLS made after January 27, 2025. It is NOT retroactive in the sense that calls made on January 25, 2027 are not suddenly made illegal when the rule goes into effect.

On the other hand, it doesn’t matter when the lead being called was generated. What matters is the date of the call. This is because the TCPA’s regulations will provide that calls on January 27, 2025 are only legal if made using the new definition of express written consent. And if you’re old lead doesn’t comply with the new definition your phone calls are illegal!

So this means you CANNOT call an old lead/contact after January 27, 2025 using regulated technology. All of those leads/contacts EXPIRE on that day.

While this may seem unprecedented, it is actually not the first time a rule change regarding express consent has crushed callers.

Back in 2013 the FCC changed the rules to require express written consent for the first time. Back then TCPAWorld.com did not exist so no one really knew about the rule change. And one of the companies that continued making calls relying on the old consent rules was a multi-level marketing outfit known as Visalus.

NO ESCAPE: ViSalus Can’t Shake Loose of $925MM TCPA Judgment In Bid for New Trial

Rather famously Visalus ended up crushed for over $900MM in a TCPA trial. But what people forget is that Visalus actually had CONSENT for the calls it made that was LEGAL at the time the consent was provided. But the intervening rule change made its calls illegal–and it was hammered by a jury as a result.

The bottom line here is that if you think you are safe to keep calling your old leads come January 27, 2025 you’re in for a massive and very unpleasant surprise. Stated plainly: your TCPA marketing consents expire January 27, 2025.

Now this rule should only apply to calls made using regulated technology. You can continue to use manual calls–or human selection technology–to call your old leads after January 27, 2025.* But you CANNOT use any form of regulated technology (prerecorded/artifical/soundboard/AI voice/RVM/IVR/VMs, etc.) for outreach to old leads after January 27, 2025.

Rather obviously that means you should be buying one-to-one compliant leads TODAY. As in RIGHT NOW.

Looping back to the topic of making money– our rates are going up in 2025 (I have a massive sponsorship deal I have to pay for. ;)) So get in now before the new rate structure takes effect!

LAST REMINDER: Troutman Amin, LLP Rates Go UP January 1, 2025 and I am Serious

Chat soon.

*Not legal advice. Get yourself a lawyer and a good one if you plan to make marketing calls or buy leads after January 27, 2025!

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Published by Eric "Czar" Troutman

The Czar of TCPAWorld Eric Troutman is one of the country’s prominent class action defense lawyers and is nationally recognized in Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) litigation and compliance. He has served as lead defense counsel in more than 70 national TCPA class actions and has litigated nearly a thousand individual TCPA cases in his role as national strategic litigation counsel for major banks and finance companies. He also helps industry participants build TCPA-compliant processes, policies, and systems. Eric has built a national litigation practice based upon deep experience, rigorous analysis and extraordinary responsiveness. Eric and his team feel equally at home litigating multibillion dollar telecommunications class actions in federal court as they do developing and executing national litigation strategies for institutions facing an onslaught of individual TCPA matters. They thrive in each of these roles – delivering consistently excellent results – while never losing sight of the client experience. While many firms now tout TCPA expertise, Eric has been there from the beginning. He built one of the country’s first TCPA-only defense teams and began serving as national TCPA counsel for his clients nearly a decade ago. This perspective allows him to swiftly develop the right litigation strategies for dealing with recurring problems, without wasting time on tactics that are bound to fail. Eric’s rich historical perspective and encyclopedic knowledge of the TCPA landscape also make him an invaluable resource to institutional compliance teams struggling to comply with the shifting regulatory landscape. No task is too small – or too big. Indeed, Eric and his team have helped build TCPA-compliant systems and processes for some of the largest and most complex corporate entities in the country. He commonly works with in-house compliance counsel to build and implement enterprise and business-line specific TCPA solutions, performs TCPA audits and drafts and reviews proposed TCPA policies and procedures. He and his team also have the technical expertise necessary to assist call centers seeking to develop TCPA-resistant call path architecture or to modify existing telephony and software integration to better insulate from potential TCPA exposure. Eric has built a reputation for thought leadership. An avid blogger and speaker, he has been at the forefront of the industry’s effort to push for clarity and a return to sanity for the TCPA for years. He was selected to advocate for the financial services industry on important TCPA issues before the Federal Communications Commission and co-authored the nation’s only comprehensive practice guide on TCPA defense. In his spare time, Eric leads defense teams representing banks and other financial services companies in consumer finance litigation matters. He has experience representing clients in UCC, TILA, RESPA FCRA, CCRA, CLRA, FDCPA, RFDCPA and FCCPA claims, as well as in fraud and bank operations issues.

1 Comment

  1. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. And, the telemarketer world is of the same mold.

    Reply

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