Is a TCPA demand letter real? How to tell a genuine demand from a scam

What a genuine demand contains

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. § 227, lets the person who received an unlawful call or text sue for $500 per violation, and up to $1,500 if the court finds the conduct willful or knowing. A demand letter is the step before that suit. Because it is built from the recipient's own records, a real one is specific.

• A list of contacts. Each call or text with the number called, the date, the time and what was said or sent. Often the Do Not Call Registry status of the number and whether a STOP was sent.
• The provision breached. § 227(b) for autodialed or prerecorded calls and texts without consent. § 227(c) and 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(c) for calls to a number on the National Do Not Call Registry. In Florida, Fla. Stat. § 501.059 as well.
• The arithmetic. Number of violations times the statutory figure. You can check it on the calculator.
• A deadline and a reference. A date by which the sender wants a response and a matter number to quote.
• A traceable sender. A registered entity, a domain that resolves to a real site, an address.

What a scam contains

Fraudulent demand letters do exist. They copy the form of a real one and skip the substance. The tells are consistent: no specific calls listed, a lump sum with no calculation, a statute cited wrongly or not at all, pressure to pay within hours, a sender address at a free webmail provider, and a payment method that cannot be reversed: gift cards, cryptocurrency, wire to a personal account.

Five checks, in order

1. Find the sender in a corporate registry. Every state publishes one. Search the exact entity name on the letter. Note the registered agent.
2. Go to the domain yourself. Type it, do not click a link. A genuine sender has a site that explains what it does and how to reach it.
3. Match the calls against your own records. Pull the dialer or messaging platform log for the dates listed. If the calls are there, the letter is describing something that happened.
4. Write to the sender quoting the reference. Ask them to confirm the matter and the deadline in writing. Keep the exchange.
5. Check the statute yourself. 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(3) and § 227(c)(5) are short. Read them. If the letter's figures match them, the arithmetic is real whatever you decide to do about it.

"But we never called them"

Check before you say so. Under the TCPA a business is liable for calls made on its behalf, so a call made by a lead generator, an affiliate or an outsourced call centre using your script or selling your product counts against you. The letter is usually right that the call happened. The open question is who made it and whether consent existed, which is covered under vendor liability and consent.

If it is real

Then the question changes from "is this a scam" to "what is this going to cost and what are my options". The deadline on the letter is now the date everything runs from. The next page is how to respond.