Decide whether this brand is the seller or the telemarketer
The requirementstatement
The brand's role — seller or telemarketer — must be established, because the obligations and the liability differ.
- 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
- the brand's role classification
- Where it liveslayer
- BrandBRAND
- How Ekas settles itdetectability
- AI · formAI_FORM
- A semantic question about what you wrote: whether a description matches a use case, whether a name looks like a filed entity. Judged by a model against written criteria.
- What the fix involvesfailureClass
- Supply evidenceTERMINAL_EVIDENCE
- Needs proof only you hold: a screenshot, a recording, a scan of the form people signed.
- Who requires itauthorities
- FCC
- When it appliesapplicabilityText
- Applies to every 10DLC registration.
Why this rule existsrationale
The two roles carry different duties, and a seller is liable for a vendor's failure to honour do-not-call requests even where the seller never touched the message. Businesses assume that engaging an agency transfers the exposure; it adds a second liable party instead. Knowing which side you are on decides who has to hold the consent records and who answers a complaint.
How to fix itremediation
Write down which role this brand holds and make the consequences explicit in the vendor contract: who holds the consent records, who processes revocations, who answers a complaint. Done when both parties have the same answer in writing.
Notesnotes
A legal classification rather than a form field, so nothing about it can be validated at submission. The judgement flags which role the registration looks like; the user has to confirm it against their own contracts, because the answer decides where the liability sits rather than what to type.
Rules you will hit next
One other rule reads the brand's role classification. 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-170An agency arrangement does not shield either party in VirginiaMediumMEDIUMBRD-037Low-Volume Standard is not available to a non-US brand that needs vettingMediumMEDIUMBRD-051Russell 3000 membership sets the starting carrier classMediumMEDIUMBRD-059A unified fundraising short code needs five years of operating historyMediumMEDIUMBRD-090A sole-proprietor brand cannot move between providersMediumMEDIUMBRD-106The business phone should be findable in a web searchMediumMEDIUM
BRD-169 is one of 196 brand rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.