Opt-out instructions must recur, not just appear at opt-in

The requirementstatement

A recurring programme must carry opt-out instructions at opt-in and at regular intervals thereafter — at least monthly.

Severityseverity
HighHIGHRejected by at least one carrier or provider, and a common cause of failure at the rest.
When it bitesphase
After you are livepostFalls due once you are sending: STOP handling, quiet hours, suppression, record retention.
What is checkedobject
outbound message cadence
Where it liveslayer
OperationalOPERATIONAL
How Ekas settles itdetectability
Post-submissionUNDETECTABLE_PRE_SUBMISSION
The subject does not exist yet at submission time: a reply window, an expiring PIN, a queue position. Reported with its deadline.
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
T-MobileCTIA
When it appliesapplicabilityText
Applies to every 10DLC registration.

Why this rule existsrationale

Subscribers forget what they joined and how to leave, and the reply that stops the programme is only obvious while the sign-up is recent. A programme that stops repeating the instruction converts would-be unsubscribers into complainants, because reporting the message as spam becomes the easiest available action.

How to fix itremediation

Carry "Reply STOP to opt out" in every message where the length allows, and at minimum in one message a month. Done when no subscriber goes a calendar month without being told how to leave.

A compliant exampleexample

Acme Coffee: 20% off beans this weekend. Shop acmecoffee.com/sale. Reply STOP to opt out.

Check this yourselfattestation

No tool can settle this one for you. Here is the check, and what wrong looks like.

Does any subscriber go a calendar month without being told how to leave?

  1. 1Audit the templates that dropped the opt-out line for length — those are the ones that go months without it, and they are usually the highest-volume ones.
  2. 2Carry "Reply STOP to opt out" wherever the length allows, and at minimum in one message a month.

What wrong looks like: Subscribers forget what they joined and how to leave, so reporting the message as spam becomes the easiest available action.

Notesnotes

A cadence across live traffic. What the user has to check is the templates that dropped the line for length — those are the ones that go months without it, and they are usually the highest-volume ones.

Rules you will hit next

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

All operational rules

OPS-075 is one of 139 operational rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.

Reading the rules is the easy part.

Ekas runs every rule that gates approval, 823 of these 915, against your registration before it reaches the carrier. It reads your site, your policy pages and your opt-in the way a reviewer would, and hands you the fix, not just the verdict.