BLURRY LINE: Court Holds Calls Offering “Free” Roofing Inspection Not Marketing And Hmmm….

Law Conference of Champions V Ticket Prices as I type: $359.00

One of the toughest lines to draw in TCPAWorld is the line between marketing and informational calling.

The rule is something like this– a call is marketing if it is sent for the purpose of encouraging the purchase or rental of goods or services unless it doesn’t, in which cast it might.

I kid. Sort of.

Let’s take the case of Tucker v. Blue Hammer, 2026 WL 3120666 (D. Colo. Oct. 19, 2026). There a business made several calls to the plaintiff offering a “free” inspection of plaintiff’s roof–ostensibly to see if the plaintiff qualified for a free roof replacement under property insurance.

Now one thing is pretty clear from this fact scenario– Blue Hammer was CERTAINLY trying to use the free inspection as a way to drum up business. But was that fact alone enough to convert the “free” inspection offer into a marketing call?

Many other courts have held “yes”– citing the old adage that there is no such thing as a free lunch many courts have determined calls made to offer a free service were simply a subterfuge to encourage the later purchase of a good or service.

But the trick in Tucker was the inspection was supposed to determine whether a roof replacement was covered by the plaintiff’s insurance. And that distinction is key. Numerous courts have already determined that calls made to offer a free service covered by insurance are not marketing calls– which is interesting.

Look at the facts before it the court determined the call itself did not encourage the Plaintiff to pay any money– the roof inspection was free– and any service to the roof would have been covered by insurance and not Plaintiff. So, again, the call was not made for the purpose of having the Plaintiff buy or rent anything.

Now I think we would have had a very different result here if, upon inspecting the roof, Blue Hammer had said “sorry your roof ain’t covered but we can replace these tiles here for $50.00 while we are up here.” And I suspect that is exactly what would have happened.

But the plaintiff in Tucker never got that far, so we’ll never know.

The rule here appears to be that calls made to offer inspections that might lead to a covered repair are NOT marketing calls– even if the caller stands to make a boatload of money off providing the covered service.

Perhaps questionable from a policy standpoint but it makes sense given the language of the CFR.

You know who always makes sense? HPO’s CLO Steve Kaplan. The guy is BRILLIANT and he joined Ep 54 of the Deserve to Win Podcast to discuss AEP and all the big Medicare changes. Be sure to check it out right now!

Chat soon.