The account tier cannot be changed more than once a quarter

The requirementstatement

brandRelationship must not be changed more than once in any three-month period.

Severityseverity: MediumMEDIUMUsually survives review, but lowers your trust score or invites a manual look you would rather avoid.
When it bitesphase: Gates approvalapprovalGet this wrong and the brand or campaign is refused at registration.
What is checkedobject: brand.brand_relationship
Where it liveslayer: BrandBRAND
How Ekas settles itdetectability: DeterministicDETERMINISTIC; Settled in code from the values you submitted. No model involved, no judgement call, same answer every time.
What the fix involvesfailureClass: Wait on someone elseTERMINAL_EXTERNAL; Needs an external system or a waiting period, such as IRS propagation, a vetting result, or a carrier queue.
Who requires itauthorities: TCR
When it appliesapplicabilityText: Applies to every 10DLC registration.

Why this rule existsrationale

The tier feeds commercial reporting rather than compliance, so the registry rate-limits it instead of validating it — and the rejection arrives as a bare error code on an edit that seemed trivial. It bites during account reviews, when someone tidies up several brands at once and one of them was already touched last month.

How to fix itremediation

Leave the tier as it is until three months have passed since the last change. Nothing about the brand's standing depends on it, so there is no cost to waiting — and no route to an exception if you do not.

Provider rejection codescodes

The code you get back when this rule is what failed, and whether that provider lets you resubmit.

Provider	Code	Resubmit
TCR	528	Yes

Check this yourselfattestation

Ekas flags this from what you submit, but the fact that settles it sits somewhere only you can reach.

Do you know when this brand's account tier was last changed, and was it more than three months ago?

1Check the brand's edit history for a previous change to the tier.
2Where the date is unknown, assume it was recent — this field is usually only touched during exactly the kind of account review that would touch it twice.

What wrong looks like: Someone tidies up several brands at once and one was already edited last month. The rejection is a bare error code on an edit that seemed trivial, and there is no exception route.

Notesnotes

The cooldown is enforced at the registry against a change history we only see when the caller supplies it. The user has to know when the tier was last edited; where that is unknown, the safe assumption is that it was recent, because this field is usually only touched during exactly the kind of review that would touch it twice.

Rules you will hit next

One other rule reads brand.brand_relationship. Fixing one field to satisfy a single rule is how a resubmission trades one rejection for another, so read these before you change anything.

BRD-153brandRelationship must be one of the five account tiersBlockingBLOCKING BRD-037Low-Volume Standard is not available to a non-US brand that needs vettingMediumMEDIUM BRD-051Russell 3000 membership sets the starting carrier classMediumMEDIUM BRD-059A unified fundraising short code needs five years of operating historyMediumMEDIUM BRD-090A sole-proprietor brand cannot move between providersMediumMEDIUM BRD-106The business phone should be findable in a web searchMediumMEDIUM

All brand rules

BRD-154 is one of 196 brand rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.