Sales pages love the phrase TCPA compliant leads, so it is worth being plain about what it can mean. A lead is a record. Compliance is decided when someone dials it: how the call is placed, when, what is said, and what happens when the person says stop. A seller can hand you a record with clean paperwork, but the rest of the compliance work is yours, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling a slogan.
This checklist comes from 21 years of supplying call centers, and it is operator practice, not legal advice. The authorities are the FCC, whose rules on prior express consent cover autodialed and prerecorded calls to cell phones under the TCPA, and the FTC, which runs the National Do Not Call Registry. Check their sites for current requirements and have your own counsel review your process. Then run each item below against your vendors and against your own floor, us included.
FCC rules on prior express consent apply to autodialed or prerecorded calls to cell phones. You often cannot tell a cell number from a landline by looking at it, so assume any number in a file could be a cell phone. Consent is specific: who the person agreed to hear from, about what, and when. Consent given to a company on one form may not extend to you, so read the language the consumer actually saw, not a summary of it, and ask your counsel whether it supports the calls you plan to make.
A vendor's assurance is not documentation. Each record should carry its own proof: the person's name and number, the date and time, the page or source where consent was captured, the exact consent language displayed, and how the person agreed. If the proof lives in a separate email or spreadsheet, it will be missing when you need it. Store it with the record in your CRM, and treat a record that arrives without it as not ready to dial. Every phone record we deliver is DNC-screened and comes with consent documentation.
The FTC runs the National Do Not Call Registry, and scrubbing against it is the baseline for any call center. A scrub is a snapshot, so ask each vendor when theirs was done, and check the FTC's current guidance on how often you must refresh your own instead of trusting a rule of thumb from a seller. Keep an internal do-not-call list, scrub every new file against it before the dialer sees it, and ask your counsel whether any state lists apply where you call. Aged files need extra care: the older the record, the more likely the person has since registered or opted out, so scrub again before you load it and ask counsel how old is too old for a given consent.
Treat any clear request to stop as a stop, whatever words the person uses. Log it at once, add the number to the internal list so it applies to every campaign, and ask counsel what deadline applies so you can beat it.
Federal rules limit the hours for telemarketing calls, measured in the consumer's local time, and some states are stricter. Look up the current windows with the FCC and FTC, set the dialer by the consumer's time zone (taken from the address, not the area code), and configure it to the strictest rule for each state, so compliance does not depend on an agent watching a clock.
Then know your dialer mode. The FCC's consent rules turn on whether a call is autodialed or prerecorded, so document how each campaign places calls: manual, preview, progressive, power or predictive. Whether a setup counts as autodialing is a legal question, so get your counsel's answer for each mode and write it down. Do not switch a campaign's mode without asking again. We would keep the same consent documentation for every mode, because it costs little and lets you change modes later without re-papering the file.
Get the answers in writing and keep them. Consent capture: how is consent collected, and can I read the exact language? Sample record: can I see a real record with its documentation attached? Scrub dates: when was each record last checked against the National Registry, and against what else? Sharing: is the same consent sold to more than one buyer? Disputes: when a consumer says they never signed up, how fast can you produce the record? Remedy: what happens when a record turns out to be bad?
A vendor who hedges on any of these is telling you something. Ours is a 100% file accuracy guarantee with a replacement policy for verified bad records, and 85% of records pass SNS verification. Our services page covers what we offer. Medicare campaigns carry carrier and CMS marketing requirements on top of these basics, so check them before you buy Medicare leads from anyone.
When a consumer, a carrier or a regulator asks about a call, what you can produce is what counts. Keep the consent record for every lead, the scrub dates for every file, call logs with dispositions and timestamps, your internal opt-out list with the date of each request, and your scripts with their version dates. Record the dialer mode and settings each campaign ran under. Ask your counsel how long to retain each category, and keep them at least that long. Storing a record is cheap next to being unable to produce one.
No lead is compliant on its own. A record can arrive with documented consent and a current DNC scrub, but compliance also depends on how, when and what you dial and how you handle opt-outs. Treat the vendor's paperwork as your starting point and confirm your process with counsel.
At minimum: who consented, the number, the date and time, the source page, the exact consent language shown, and how the person agreed. Ask your counsel whether you need more, and store it with the record instead of in a separate file.
Ask your counsel for a period that fits your states, carriers and campaigns, and keep records at least that long. Set the schedule once, write it down, and apply it to every record the same way.
If you want to see how our screening and consent documentation work on a real order, tell us your category, states and daily call volume through our contact page and we will walk you through it.