You Received a TCPA Demand Letter: The First 30 Days

Step one: preserve, before anything else

Issue a litigation hold immediately and make it real. The records that decide TCPA cases are the ones most likely to age out of a retention policy: campaign logs, opt-in timestamps and source URLs, IP addresses, consent capture screenshots, internal do-not-call lists, scrubbing records, and the vendor's send data.

Spoliation turns a defensible consent case into an indefensible one. Confirm in writing that your platform vendor is preserving as well — their retention window is often shorter than yours.

Step two: reconstruct consent

• Identify the exact channel each plaintiff's number entered your system, and the date and time.
• Capture the consent language as it appeared to the consumer on that date — not the current version of the page.
• Determine whether the message was marketing or purely transactional; the consent standard differs.
• Check whether prior express written consent, including clear and conspicuous disclosure and a signature, was actually obtained for marketing.
• Pull revocation history — a documented opt-out that kept receiving messages is the fact pattern that generates class claims.
• Check DNC scrubbing cadence and whether an internal DNC policy exists in writing, as the regulations require.

Step three: assess who else is on the hook

Liability commonly runs through lead generators, marketing agencies, and SMS platforms. Review those contracts for indemnity, representation and warranty language about consent provenance, and insurance obligations, and tender promptly where the contract allows it.

Also tender to your insurers. TCPA coverage is heavily litigated and frequently excluded, but late notice is an independent reason to lose coverage that might otherwise have applied.

Step four: decide the posture deliberately

An individual demand and a class-action vehicle are different problems. A single-plaintiff matter with solid consent records may resolve for a nuisance figure. A demand that reads as a class placeholder — vague plaintiff, broad campaign references, a preservation demand of its own — deserves a defense strategy before a settlement conversation.

Quiet, early resolution has a real cost too: a fast payment to the first claimant can attract the second. Counsel should price both paths before you answer the letter.

Step five: fix the campaign

Pause or repair the underlying campaign while the matter is pending. Continued messaging after notice supports willfulness, which is what converts $500 per message into $1,500.

Rainey Law P.C. defends TCPA demands and class claims and rebuilds consent and revocation workflows so the same campaign does not generate the next letter.