Customer-care contact details must recur too

The requirementstatement

Customer-care contact instructions must be promoted at opt-in and at regular intervals thereafter, at least monthly.

Severityseverity: MediumMEDIUMUsually survives review, but lowers your trust score or invites a manual look you would rather avoid.
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: CTIA
When it appliesapplicabilityText: Applies to every 10DLC registration.

Why this rule existsrationale

The opt-out is not the only thing a subscriber needs to be able to find; a consumer who does not recognise a message needs a route to a person before their only remaining option is a spam report. HELP covers it on request, but a recipient who does not know HELP exists will not send it, which is why the instruction has to appear rather than wait to be asked for.

How to fix itremediation

Include "Reply HELP for help" alongside the opt-out line, and put the support address or number itself into at least one message a month. Done when a subscriber can reach a person without searching for the brand.

A compliant exampleexample

Acme Coffee: reply HELP for help or email support@acmecoffee.com. 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.

Can a subscriber reach a person without searching for the brand — in at least one message a month?

1Check the monthly template rather than the sample set. Samples almost always carry both lines and live traffic often does not.
2Include "Reply HELP for help" alongside the opt-out line, and put the support address or number itself into at least one message a month.

What wrong looks like: A recipient who does not recognise a message and does not know HELP exists will not send it. Their only remaining option is a spam report.

Notesnotes

Absorbs MSG-080, which states the same cadence from the message-content side. A property of live sends. What the user has to do is check the monthly template rather than the sample set — samples almost always carry both lines and live traffic often does not.

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.

OPS-075Opt-out instructions must recur, not just appear at opt-inHighHIGH OPS-032A help request containing a stop-word is not an opt-outMediumMEDIUM OPS-042Somebody has to own revocations that arrive in conversationMediumMEDIUM OPS-050The opt-out confirmation is worth sending inside five minutesMediumMEDIUM OPS-051Only ask which messages to stop when there is more than one kindMediumMEDIUM OPS-057Log the sends you did not makeMediumMEDIUM

All operational rules

OPS-076 is one of 139 operational rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.