TCPA Demand Letter: What to Do in the First Days and Which Records to Gather

The statute gives individuals their own right to sue. Under 47 U.S.C. 227(b)(3), a person can seek 500 dollars for each call made in violation of the autodialer and artificial or prerecorded voice rules, and a court may raise that to as much as three times the amount if the violation was willful or knowing. Under 227(c)(5), a person who received more than one telephone call within any 12-month period in violation of the do-not-call rules can seek up to 500 dollars per violation.

A demand letter applies those figures to a count of calls or texts and proposes a payment. Some letters come from a law firm on behalf of a proposed class. Others come from an individual acting alone. The letter is a claim. It is the sender's account of what happened, and it has not been tested by anyone.

The table lists the steps this post describes, with the source behind each one. The order matters less than doing all of them quickly. None of them involves replying to the sender.

This is the plain part. A response to a demand letter should come from a lawyer. What a business owner writes or says to the sender can be used later, and an apology or an explanation offered in good faith can read as an admission. A lawyer can also check things an owner cannot easily check, such as whether the sender has brought similar claims before and which court's decisions would apply.

If you do not have a lawyer, your state bar runs a referral service. Ask specifically for experience defending TCPA claims. Bring the letter, the date it arrived, the reply date it names and the records described below.

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e) deals with electronically stored information that 'should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation' and is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it. If the loss harms the other side, a court may order measures to cure the harm. If the court finds the party acted with intent to deprive the other side of the information, the measures can be severe. The committee note to the rule says many court decisions hold that potential litigants have a duty to preserve relevant information when litigation is reasonably foreseeable.

A demand letter is a written statement that someone is considering a lawsuit. Whether and when a duty to preserve began in your case is for your lawyer to say. The practical step is the same either way: stop routine deletion before anything is lost.

Messaging and dialing platforms may delete logs and recordings after a set period. Check the retention setting on each one. The same applies to your lead vendor, your web forms and any consent-capture tool, since the record you need may sit in someone else's system.

• Call and text logs in the dialer, messaging platform and phone carrier portal
• Call recordings and voicemail drops
• Web form submissions, including the page version shown on the day of consent
• CRM notes and the history of changes to the contact record
• Opt-out, STOP and do-not-call entries, with the time each was received
• Emails and chat messages with the lead vendor or calling vendor about this contact or campaign
• Scripts, message templates and prerecorded or AI voice audio used in the campaign

The rules themselves describe most of these records. The FCC's definition of prior express written consent in 47 CFR 64.1200(f)(9) is a signed written agreement that names the telephone number and authorizes the seller's calls. The FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule, at 16 CFR 310.5, lists records sellers and telemarketers keep for five years. They include a record of each telemarketing call, records of express consent, each do-not-call request and which version of the national registry was used.

Collect the records as they are. Export them in their original form with their original timestamps. Do not tidy them, merge them or fill gaps from memory. A record that was created after the letter arrived is worth far less than one created at the time, and an altered record can do real damage.

Write a short timeline to go with the exports: when the number entered your systems, from which source, each contact, and each request to stop. Mark what you know from records and what you are inferring.

The FCC's revocation rule at 47 CFR 64.1200(a)(10) says a called party may revoke consent by any reasonable method that clearly expresses a wish not to receive further calls or texts. Requests must be honored within a reasonable time not to exceed ten business days. Whether a demand letter counts as a revocation under that rule is a legal question. Suppressing the number at once means that question does not have to be settled first.

Suppress the number everywhere. One way this goes wrong is that the number is blocked in the CRM while a separate texting tool, a second brand or an outside call center keeps contacting it. Write down when each system was updated and who confirmed it.

Federal courts no longer read the statute the same way everywhere. On 25 February 2026 the Fifth Circuit held in Bradford v. Sovereign Pest Control of Texas that the FCC lacked authority to require written consent for prerecorded telemarketing calls, according to a summary by Duane Morris. That court covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. On 14 July 2026 the Seventh Circuit held in Steidinger v. Blackstone Medical Services that marketing texts are not 'telephone calls' for private do-not-call claims, according to Holland & Knight. That court covers Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. Both firms note that other circuits have not followed.

State law adds another layer. Florida's Telephone Solicitation Act has its own consent definition and its own damages. For text messages it also has a notice step: the statute says a person must reply STOP and may sue only if the texts continue more than 15 days later. A lawyer will check whether a state statute like that is in play.

Time matters too. Under 28 U.S.C. 1658(a), civil actions under federal statutes enacted after 1990 must generally be brought within four years unless another law says otherwise, and the TCPA dates from 1991. How that period applies to the contacts in your letter is for your lawyer. It is one more reason to pull the full history for the number and not only the calls the letter lists.

Insurance is uncertain. Manatt has described court decisions that enforced policy exclusions against TCPA claims, and the research we reviewed found no recent ruling that settles the question. Coverage depends on the wording of your own policy. Read the notice terms in the policy, send the letter to your broker or insurer in the way those terms describe, and ask for the answer in writing.

Vendors matter because the record often sits with them. If a lead seller supplied the number, ask in writing for the consent record behind that lead and ask them to preserve it. If a call center or texting platform placed the contact, ask for their logs. Your contract may include a promise to defend or reimburse you. TCPAWorld reported in September 2025 on a case in which an insurer alleged it spent about 1.36 million dollars defending two class actions tied to purchased leads after the lead seller declined to defend. That is an allegation in one lawsuit, and it shows that a contract term and a payment are different things.

Most of the avoidable harm in the first days comes from well-meant action. The list below describes the common ones. Each is a process point. None is a view on the merits of any claim.

• Do not call, text or email the person who sent the letter, even to apologize or ask a question
• Do not delete or edit logs, recordings, forms or CRM entries
• Do not recreate a missing consent record or backdate a note
• Do not keep calling or texting the number from any system
• Do not post about the letter online or discuss the sender by name
• Do not treat the reply date as optional; give it to your lawyer on day one