Declining messages must not degrade the service afterwards

The requirementstatement

A consumer who declines SMS at signup must retain the same access to the underlying service as one who accepted.

Severityseverity: BlockingBLOCKINGBreaking this rule gets the submission rejected. There is no partial credit.
When it bitesphase: Gates approvalapprovalGet this wrong and the brand or campaign is refused at registration.
What is checkedobject: post-signup service access
Where it liveslayer: Consent flowCONSENT_FLOW
How Ekas settles itdetectability: AI · formAI_FORMHuman checkHUMAN; 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. Only someone holding the document or making the call can settle it. Ekas tells you exactly what to look at.
What the fix involvesfailureClass: Fix the websiteTERMINAL_WEBSITE; The fix lives on your site. No amount of rewording the form clears it.
Who requires itauthorities: TwilioFCC
When it appliesapplicabilityText: Applies when the use case is NOT TWO_FACTOR_AUTH, SECURITY_ALERT and FRAUD_ALERT.

Why this rule existsrationale

Consent that is free at the form and expensive afterwards is not free. Where declining quietly costs the customer their booking reminders, their delivery window or their account alerts, the pressure to accept is real even though every control on the page was optional — and the consumer discovers it only after they have chosen.

How to fix itremediation

Walk the journey yourself with the box unticked: create the account, place the order, make the booking, and check that everything a subscriber would receive still reaches you by another channel. Fix whatever only arrives by text. Done when the two journeys differ in the channel and nothing else.

Check this yourselfattestation

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

Have you walked the signup yourself with the SMS box left unticked, and confirmed the account still gets everything a subscriber gets, by some other channel?

1Create two accounts, place two orders or make two bookings: one accepting SMS, one declining.
2Compare what each receives and can do — confirmations, reminders, delivery windows, account alerts, support access.
3Anything the declining account never receives at all is the defect. Move it to email or in-app.

What wrong looks like: The declining customer gets no appointment reminder, because reminders were only ever built as texts. Every control on the form was optional, and declining still cost them the service.

Notesnotes

DETECTABLE ONLY BY THE CUSTOMER. Nothing we can crawl shows what happens to an account after signup, so this is surfaced as a warning with the test the user must run themselves: sign up twice, once declining, and compare what the declining account can do and receive. Twilio applies it as the post-signup half of the same standard CON-069 tests at the form.

Rules you will hit next

Other consent flow rules at the same severity. A registration is judged as a whole, not rule by rule.

CON-008The live CTA and the declared message flow must say the same thingBlockingBLOCKING CON-010The three subscriber-management attributes must be declared trueBlockingBLOCKING CON-013Subscriber attributes must agree with the message bodies suppliedBlockingBLOCKING CON-023Evidence URLs must resolve without a loginBlockingBLOCKING CON-024The opt-in URL must serve a certificate that verifiesBlockingBLOCKING CON-027The opt-in URL must land on a page that carries the opt-inBlockingBLOCKING

All consent flow rules

CON-070 is one of 101 consent flow rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.