The Telephone Consumer Protection Act is the US federal statute governing telemarketing calls, automated dialing and prerecorded messages. It is the source of most consent requirements in outbound calling and carries statutory damages per violation.
TCPA is frequently used loosely as shorthand for "the calling rules", but it is one of two regimes. The TCPA is a statute enforced partly through private lawsuits; the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule is a separate regulation that contains the abandoned-call and safe-harbour provisions most relevant to dialer configuration.
The exposure that makes it consequential is structural: statutory damages accrue per call, so a configuration error that affects a campaign is multiplied by the size of the campaign rather than assessed once.
Whether and how it applies to a given team’s calls depends on who they are calling and on what basis, which is a question for counsel rather than for a dialer vendor. This is a plain-English summary, not legal advice.
Get started
Ready to eliminate dead dials and marked-up credits?
Seven days, 1,000 credits, no credit card. Or thirty minutes with the two people who would do the work.