A promotion must be open to people who do not join the SMS programme
The requirementstatement
Participation in a promotion, loyalty scheme or offer must not require the consumer to be enrolled in text messaging.
- Severityseverity
- HighHIGHRejected by at least one carrier or provider, and a common cause of failure at the rest.
- When it bitesphase
- Gates approvalapprovalGet this wrong and the brand or campaign is refused at registration.
- What is checkedobject
- promotion terms; CTA copy
- Where it liveslayer
- Consent flowCONSENT_FLOW
- 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
- Fix the websiteTERMINAL_WEBSITE
- The fix lives on your site. No amount of rewording the form clears it.
- Who requires itauthorities
- T-MobileAT&TFCC
- When it appliesapplicabilityText
- Applies to every 10DLC registration.
Why this rule existsrationale
T-Mobile puts it flatly: participation in text promotions should never be a requirement. When the only way to get the member price is to be on the list, the enrolment is the price of the discount rather than a decision about messaging, and the carrier reads the resulting numbers as coerced. Brands arrive here by building the offer around the channel — the promotion genuinely runs over SMS — without noticing they have made the channel compulsory.
How to fix itremediation
Give the promotion a second route in — a web account, an email sign-up, a code at the till — and price it the same. Keep the SMS enrolment as one way to participate rather than the gate. Done when the terms describe SMS as optional and a non-subscriber can claim the same offer.
A compliant exampleexample
Join Acme Coffee Rewards online, in store, or by text. Members get 10% off however they joined; text alerts are optional and you can reply STOP at any time.
Common mistakespitfalls
- An SMS-only tier that is materially better than every other tier is a requirement in practice, whatever the terms say.
Provider rejection codescodes
The code you get back when this rule is what failed, and whether that provider lets you resubmit.
| Provider | Code | Resubmit |
|---|---|---|
| Twilio | 30475 | Yes |
Notesnotes
Distinct from CON-076: there the prize is what buys the opt-in, here the opt-in is what buys the promotion. They fail in opposite directions and are fixed differently — 076 by decoupling the entry, this one by opening a second route in.
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-017An offline opt-in still needs a findable business behind itHighHIGHCON-033Opt-in evidence must be the live surface, not a mockup of itHighHIGHCON-038Verbally-collected informational campaigns need the mockup and the messagesHighHIGHCON-042The phone field must be optional on a general-purpose formHighHIGHCON-044A required phone field must carry an SMS disclaimer beside itHighHIGHCON-064A kiosk or terminal must not pre-fill the consumer's numberHighHIGH
CON-075 is one of 101 consent flow rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.