Checklist · Consumer Protection
Documenting and Pursuing an Unwanted Call or Text Claim: A Practical Checklist
47 U.S.C. § 227
- Type
- Checklist
- Jurisdiction
- National
- Date
- 2025-03-26
- Topic
- Consumer Protection
This checklist covers what to do about unwanted calls, texts, and faxes, in the order that preserves the most value. The first sequence is immediate: stop the flow, register, block, and — critically — revoke consent in a way that creates a record. The second sequence is documentation: what to log for every call, how to preserve voicemails and screenshots before a phone deletes them, and what evidence establishes each element of a claim. The third sequence covers identifying the responsible seller, which is the step that determines whether a claim exists at all. The fourth covers complaints to federal and state regulators. The fifth covers evaluating and pursuing a claim, including how to count violations and what a case is realistically worth. A final sequence covers the business side: what to do when a demand letter arrives, and the compliance audit that prevents the next one.
Documenting and Pursuing an Unwanted Call or Text Claim: A Practical Checklist
Consumer Protection > Telemarketing and Unwanted Contact | Published 26 March 2025 - Updated 22 March 2026 | UpLaw - uplaw.us
⭐ Everything here depends on one thing: a written record made at the time. A person with a call log and a saved voicemail has a claim. A person with the same experience and no record has a story.
Sequence A — Today
☐ Register every number on the national Do Not Call registry. Free, permanent, and effective against telemarketers 31 days after registration. ☐ Enable the carrier's call blocking and labeling service. ☐ Consider enabling "silence unknown callers" on the device. ☐ ⚠ Do not press a key to be removed from an unknown recorded call. It confirms a live number. ☐ ⚠ Do not answer "yes" to an opening question from an unknown recorded caller. ☐ ⚠ Never provide payment information, account numbers, or personal data to a caller you did not initiate contact with. ☐ Start a log today — see Sequence B. Retroactive reconstruction is far weaker evidence.
Sequence B — Revoke, on the record
⭐ This is the highest-value step in the entire process. It converts a contested consent fight into a simple sequence: request, then call.
B1. For texts
☐ Reply STOP. ☐ ⭐ Screenshot your STOP message and any confirmation reply, with the timestamp visible. ☐ Back the screenshots up off the phone. ☐ Log every message received afterward.
B2. For calls
☐ Say clearly: "I revoke any consent to be contacted, and I request that this number be placed on your internal do-not-call list." ☐ Record the date, time, agent name, and company name immediately afterward. ☐ Ask for a confirmation number or email, and note the refusal if one is refused. ☐ ⚠ If the caller says revocation must be in writing to a specific address, note that too. A caller may not impose an exclusive method of revocation. ☐ Send a short follow-up email or letter to the company and keep a copy.
B3. For a reassigned number
☐ Send written notice stating that the number was reassigned, that you are not the account holder, and that all consent is revoked. ☐ Keep proof of mailing or sending. ☐ ⭐ This letter converts every later call into a documented willful violation.
B4. What revocation reaches
☐ Revocation as to marketing generally reaches all marketing from that seller, across channels and brands. ☐ It does not require you to identify a specific campaign. ☐ It survives an established business relationship. ☐ ⚠ It must be processed within a short, reasonable time — calls after that window are violations.
Sequence C — Documentation
C1. The call log
For every call, record:
☐ Date ☐ Time ☐ Number displayed ☐ Whether you answered ☐ ⭐ Whether a recording or artificial voice played — this is the element that survives the narrowed autodialer definition ☐ The product or service offered ☐ The company name given ☐ Whether you made a stop request on this call ☐ Whether a voicemail was left, and where it is saved
C2. Preservation
☐ ⚠ Save every voicemail immediately and export it off the phone. Phones and carriers delete them. ☐ Screenshot every text, with the sender number and timestamp visible. ☐ Screenshot the STOP reply and any confirmation. ☐ Download the carrier's call detail records for the relevant months. ☐ Save your Do Not Call registry confirmation email. ☐ Keep copies of any letter or email you sent to the seller. ☐ ⚠ Check your state's recording law before recording a call. Some states require all-party consent.
C3. What each piece of evidence proves
| Evidence | Element it establishes |
|---|---|
| Log entries | The count of violations under 47 U.S.C. § 227 |
| Saved voicemail | ⭐ Artificial or prerecorded voice |
| Message content | Telemarketing versus informational classification |
| Screenshot of STOP | Revocation, and willfulness for enhanced damages |
| Notes of oral stop requests | Internal do-not-call violation, 47 C.F.R. part 64 |
| Registry confirmation | Registry status and the 31-day threshold |
| Displayed numbers rotating locally | Caller identification claim under 47 U.S.C. § 227; penalties at 47 U.S.C. § 501 |
| Fax with defective opt-out notice | Junk fax claim |
| Carrier records | Independent corroboration |
Sequence D — Identify the seller
⭐ A campaign you cannot attribute to a company is a campaign you cannot act on. This sequence is what turns a nuisance into a claim.
☐ Note the product or service being sold. The seller — the company whose product is offered — is liable for calls made on its behalf. ☐ Answer at least once and let the pitch develop enough to get a company name. ☐ Ask the agent for the company's full legal name and mailing address. ☐ If the caller is a lead generator, ask which seller it is calling for. ☐ Search the displayed numbers and distinctive script language; other consumers frequently document the same campaign. ☐ Check state business registration records for a registered agent and address. ☐ ⭐ If you completed a transaction, the confirmation, invoice, or welcome email names the seller — the strongest identification available. ☐ ⚠ Never pay, and never give account information, in order to identify a caller.
Sequence E — Complain
☐ File a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission, which administers 47 U.S.C. § 227 and the rules at 47 C.F.R. part 64; procedural rules at 47 C.F.R. part 1. ☐ File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces the Telemarketing Sales Rule at 16 C.F.R. part 310 under 15 U.S.C. § 6101 and 15 U.S.C. § 6102, and the FTC Act at 15 U.S.C. § 45. ☐ File with your state attorney general; states enforce under 15 U.S.C. § 6103 and under their own statutes. ☐ ⭐ Check whether your state has its own do-not-call statute with private damages. Several are stronger than federal law, and some shift attorney's fees. ☐ For unwanted commercial email, note the requirements at 15 U.S.C. § 7702, 15 U.S.C. § 7703, and 15 U.S.C. § 7704, enforced under 15 U.S.C. § 7706 and 16 C.F.R. part 316; definitions and scope of the email statute are at 15 U.S.C. § 7701. ⚠ There is no general private right of action for ordinary recipients. ☐ For pay-per-call abuses, see 15 U.S.C. § 6151, 15 U.S.C. § 6152, and 15 U.S.C. § 6153. ☐ Keep the confirmation number from every complaint; complaint history supports willfulness.
Sequence F — Evaluate the claim
F1. Count the violations
Sort every logged call into these categories. ⭐ A single call can fall into more than one.
☐ Prerecorded or artificial voice to a cell phone — $500 each ☐ Prerecorded voice to a residential line — $500 each ☐ Call after a stop request (internal do-not-call) — $500 each, and ⭐ willful, supporting up to $1,500 ☐ Telemarketing call to a registered number without an exemption — $500 each ☐ Fax advertisement with a defective opt-out notice — $500 each ☐ Misleading caller identification with the required intent
F2. Assess the defendant
☐ Is the seller identifiable and solvent? ☐ Is it a real business with assets and a registered agent, or an offshore operation? ☐ Did it accept and fulfill orders from the campaign? ⭐ Accepting the sale is strong ratification evidence. ☐ Is there a lead generator in the chain whose consent records can be demanded?
F3. Assess consent exposure
☐ Did you ever request a quote, enter a contest, or fill out a form in this industry? ☐ Do you have a relationship with the seller? ☐ ⭐ Does it matter? If you revoked and the calls continued, consent is largely beside the point.
F4. Deadlines
☐ Federal claims: four years. ☐ ⚠ State claims are often shorter. Check before assuming you have time. ☐ Each call generally accrues separately.
F5. Get advice
☐ Consult a consumer attorney. Many take these on contingency because of statutory damages and, in many states, fee shifting. ☐ Bring the log, the voicemails, the screenshots, and the registry confirmation to the first meeting. ☐ Ask specifically about your state's telemarketing statute, its damages, and its limitations period.
Sequence G — Is this fraud rather than marketing?
⭐ Ask what the caller wants. A caller who wants to sell you something is a telemarketing problem, handled at the pace of this checklist. A caller who wants you to move money right now is a fraud problem, and hours matter.
☐ ⚠ Payment demanded by gift card, wire transfer, cryptocurrency, cash-to-cash transfer, or payment app — treat as fraud. ☐ ⚠ Claims to be a government agency and threatens arrest, deportation, or license suspension — fraud. ☐ ⚠ Says your account is compromised and asks you to move money to a "safe account" — fraud. ☐ ⚠ Advance fee for a loan, grant, prize, or recovery of prior losses — fraud, and separately prohibited by 16 C.F.R. part 310. ☐ Asks you to install software or grant remote access — fraud. ☐ Instructs you not to tell your bank or family — fraud.
If money moved: ☐ Contact the bank or payment provider immediately and request a recall or reversal. ☐ File a police report and get the report number. ☐ File with federal fraud reporting channels. ☐ Place a fraud alert or freeze on credit files. ☐ See responding to fraud, a scam, or financial exploitation, consumer fraud and financial exploitation, and resolving a bank account hold or payment dispute.
If the target is an older adult: ☐ Preserve everything and avoid blame; shame is the main reason these losses go unreported. ☐ See elder financial exploitation, the quiet theft, and detecting, reporting, and unwinding elder financial exploitation.
If the calls are about a debt: ☐ Different regime — the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, including 15 U.S.C. § 1692f. ☐ ⭐ A collector using a prerecorded voice to call a cell phone without consent can violate both statutes at once. ☐ See consumer credit reporting and debt collection.
Sequence H — Reduce the flow at the source
⭐ The registry, the blocking app, and the STOP reply all work downstream. This sequence works upstream, and it is the only thing that reduces volume permanently.
☐ Use a secondary number for forms, contests, loyalty programs, and online quote requests. ☐ ⚠ Decline "text me my results," "text me the receipt," and similar prompts unless you want the number in that system. ☐ Read what a quote request says about sharing before submitting it, especially on comparison sites. ☐ Opt out with major data brokers, and repeat annually — profiles rebuild. ☐ Exercise state privacy rights to delete and to opt out of sale or sharing where available. See data privacy and security and responding to a data breach and exercising privacy rights. ☐ Review app permissions that share contact information. ☐ ⚠ Understand that a single form fill can generate calls for years, from companies with no relationship to the site you visited.
Sequence I — If you are the business receiving a demand letter
☐ ⚠ Preserve everything immediately — call detail records, consent records, scripts, suppression logs, vendor contracts. Issue a written hold. ☐ Identify the campaign, the vendor, the list source, and the date range. ☐ Pull the consent record for the specific number: page version, disclosure text, timestamp, acceptance evidence. ☐ Pull the suppression history for the number across every channel and brand. ☐ Pull the registry scrub record and the reassigned-numbers query for the campaign. ☐ Determine whether a recording or artificial voice was used — ⭐ that determines whether the autodialer defense is even relevant. ☐ Determine the message classification: telemarketing or informational. See the content test in telemarketing, robocalls, and unwanted contact. ☐ Assess class exposure: how many other numbers share the same defect? ☐ ⚠ Do not call the claimant. Route all contact through counsel. ☐ Suspend the campaign pending review. ☐ Notify insurers; some policies respond, many contain express exclusions. ☐ Demand the vendor's records under the contract's audit provision.
The compliance audit that prevents the next one
☐ Collect prior express written consent for all marketing calls and texts, with the required disclosures, and store the full record per number. ☐ ⚠ Do not accept vendor-sourced consent without sample record production before the campaign. Request ten records at random and evaluate them. ☐ Maintain one enterprise-wide suppression list fed by every channel — text reply, call center, web form, chat, email, and point of sale. ☐ Honor revocation through any reasonable means; ⚠ never designate an exclusive method. ☐ Scrub against the national registry before every campaign and retain the record. ☐ Query the reassigned numbers database and retain the result. ☐ Observe calling hours by the recipient's local time. ☐ Identify the seller at the start of every call. ☐ Limit abandoned calls and deliver a compliant identification message — 16 C.F.R. part 310. ☐ Include a compliant opt-out notice on every fax advertisement. ☐ Retain consent, suppression, scrub, script, and call detail records for the limitations period plus a margin.
The deadline and threshold table
| Item | Timing | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Registry effective against telemarketers | 31 days after registration | Earlier calls are not registry violations |
| Save the voicemail | ⚠ Immediately | Phones and carriers delete |
| Revocation processing by the caller | Short and reasonable | Later calls are violations |
| Federal TCPA claim | 4 years | ⚠ Barred |
| State claims | Often shorter | ⚠ Barred |
| Bank recall of a fraudulent transfer | Hours to days | Money becomes unrecoverable |
| Business preservation hold after a demand | Immediately | Spoliation exposure |
Related resources
Plain-language overview: the call you never asked for. Full doctrine, elements, and defenses: telemarketing, robocalls, and unwanted contact. Forms, logs, and letters: the robocall and unwanted contact claim toolkit.
Adjacent: consumer contracts and cancellation rights, the thing you cannot cancel, cancelling a contract, membership, or timeshare, consumer banking and payments, and electronic signatures and online contract formation.
⭐ One instruction covers the whole checklist: say stop in a way that leaves a record, then log every call that comes after. That log is the case.
Appendix: the blank call log
Copy this into a notes app or a spreadsheet and fill one row per call. ⭐ Thirty seconds per call is the entire investment.
| # | Date | Time | Number shown | Answered? | Recording? | Product offered | Company named | Stop request? | Voicemail saved? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | |||||
| 2 | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | |||||
| 3 | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | |||||
| 4 | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | |||||
| 5 | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | |||||
| 6 | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | |||||
| 7 | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | |||||
| 8 | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
Summary lines to keep at the bottom of the log:
☐ Date registered on the national Do Not Call registry: ____________ ☐ Date of first stop request, and how made: ____________ ☐ Company or companies identified: ____________ ☐ Total calls logged: ____ · Calls with a recording: ____ · Calls after the stop request: ____ ☐ Voicemails exported and backed up to: ____________ ☐ Screenshots backed up to: ____________ ☐ Complaints filed (agency and confirmation number): ____________
⚠ Two columns do most of the work. "Recording?" establishes the prerecorded-voice element, which does not depend on dialing technology. "Stop request?" marks the boundary after which every call is both a separate violation and evidence of willfulness.
Appendix: what to say, verbatim
On a call you intend to act on:
"I am revoking any consent to be contacted at this number, for any purpose, by you or anyone calling on your behalf. Please place this number on your internal do-not-call list. What is your name, and what is the full legal name of the company you are calling for?"
In a follow-up email or letter:
Re: Revocation of consent and do-not-call request — [your phone number]
I am revoking any consent, express or implied, to receive calls or text messages at [number], including autodialed calls, calls using an artificial or prerecorded voice, and marketing messages of any kind. This revocation applies to you, your affiliates, and anyone calling or texting on your behalf.
Please place [number] on your internal do-not-call list and confirm in writing that you have done so.
I made an oral request on [date] at approximately [time] to a representative identifying himself or herself as [name]. Calls have continued since that date.
[Name, address, date]
☐ Send it, keep a copy, and note the date. ☐ ⭐ Every call after this letter is documented, attributed, and arguably willful. That is what the letter is for.
Appendix: five common situations, resolved
"I get eight calls a day and none of them leave a message." Answer one. You cannot act on a campaign you cannot attribute. Let the pitch develop far enough to hear a company and a product, then hang up and write it down. If the calls are recorded messages that hang up on silence, note that too — it is a fact about the campaign.
"I told them to stop and they said I have to write to their legal department." Write the letter, but note the conversation first. A caller may not designate an exclusive method of revocation, so the oral request was already effective — and the instruction itself is evidence of a practice.
"I never gave anyone this number." You may not have. Numbers are reassigned, harvested from public records, appended from data brokers, and generated. Send the written revocation and log what follows; the source matters less than the sequence.
"The calls stopped after I complained, so is it over?" The claim does not disappear because the calls stopped. If you logged violations, they remain actionable within the limitations period. ⭐ Preserve the record even after the problem resolves — four years is a long time to rely on memory.
"They offered me $200 to go away." Count the violations before answering. Statutory damages are $500 per violation and up to $1,500 for willful ones, and a settlement offer arriving quickly usually means the company already knows it cannot produce consent records. Talk to a consumer attorney before signing a release.