{
  "id": "BRD-038",
  "slug": "brd-038",
  "title": "Some providers require an external vet for every non-US brand",
  "statement": "At least one provider requires external vetting on every non-US customer before the brand can be used.",
  "rationale": "Where this applies it is a precondition rather than a remedy: the brand does not proceed at all until the vet is bought, so discovering it after the customer's data is collected wastes the submission and the fee for the class of vet that was ordered first. It is easy to miss because the requirement sits in the provider's onboarding terms rather than in any field validation.",
  "layer": "BRAND",
  "layerSlug": "brand",
  "object": "brand.country + external vet record",
  "severity": "BLOCKING",
  "detectability": [
    "DETERMINISTIC"
  ],
  "failureClass": "TERMINAL_EXTERNAL",
  "authorities": [
    "Vonage"
  ],
  "applicabilityText": "Applies to every 10DLC registration.",
  "universal": true,
  "remediation": "Order the external vet before submitting the brand, and budget its fee into the customer's onboarding. Done when a completed vet is attached to a non-US brand on a provider that requires one.",
  "notes": "Conditional on the submission target — Vonage states it explicitly for every non-US customer — and NOT tagged with `providers`, because the tag budget is spent on genuine baseline divergences and this one is checkable from the target we already hold. The condition lives in the check, which passes immediately for a US brand and reports UNCLEAR when the target is unknown. What the user must confirm themselves is whether their own provider imposes the same precondition: it is in the onboarding terms, not in any API error.",
  "phase": "approval",
  "automated": true,
  "attestation": {
    "question": "Have you checked your provider's onboarding terms for a mandatory external vet on non-US customers, and budgeted its fee?",
    "howToCheck": [
      "Read the provider's onboarding or acceptable-use terms rather than the API reference — the requirement lives there and produces no field validation error.",
      "Where it applies, order the vet before submitting the brand, and price it into the customer's onboarding."
    ],
    "failureLooksLike": "The brand is submitted, the fee for the wrong class of vet is spent first, and the requirement surfaces only as a support answer after the customer's data is already collected."
  },
  "url": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/brand/brd-038/",
  "markdown": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/brand/brd-038.md",
  "registry": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/",
  "updated": "2026-07-25",
  "licence": "CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}