The HELP reply must send people somewhere that answers

The requirementstatement

Every destination named in the HELP reply — a phone number, a URL or an email address — must actually reach help.

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: campaign.help_message
Where it liveslayer: OperationalOPERATIONAL
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 fieldRETRY_FIELD; A better value in the form fixes it. Ekas can rewrite it and re-check.
Who requires itauthorities: CTIAMMA
When it appliesapplicabilityText: Applies to every 10DLC registration.

Why this rule existsrationale

HELP exists so a recipient who does not recognise a number can find out who is texting and how to make it stop. A reply pointing at a number that rings out, a mailbox nobody reads, or a URL that 404s satisfies a presence check and fails the consumer entirely, which is why the handbook names dead ends specifically. The usual cause is a support address that was retired after the auto-reply was written.

How to fix itremediation

Test every destination in the HELP reply the way a recipient would: dial the number, send a message to the address, open the link. Replace anything that does not reach a person who can help. Done when each destination has been exercised end to end since the reply was last edited.

A compliant exampleexample

Acme Coffee: for help, email support@acmecoffee.com or call 415-555-0134. Msg & data rates may apply. Reply STOP to unsubscribe.

Common mistakespitfalls

A support address that auto-replies "this mailbox is not monitored" is a dead end with extra steps, and reviewers treat it as one.

Check this yourselfattestation

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

Have you dialled the number, mailed the address and opened the link in the HELP reply yourself, from outside your own network, since it was last edited?

1Dial the number and confirm a person who can help answers.
2Send a message to the address and confirm a human replies.
3Open the link and confirm it loads a page that answers the question a confused recipient has.

What wrong looks like: A support address retired after the auto-reply was written. A mailbox that auto-replies "this mailbox is not monitored" is a dead end with extra steps, and reviewers treat it as one.

Notesnotes

Only partly settleable from here. We can see whether the destination belongs to the brand and whether the site corroborates it, and we can flag one that plainly does not — but whether a number is answered is not observable from a registration. The user has to place the call, send the email and open the link themselves, from outside their own network, and confirm each reaches a person.

Rules you will hit next

3 other rules read campaign.help_message. Fixing one field to satisfy a single rule is how a resubmission trades one rejection for another, so read these before you change anything.

MSG-009HELP reply must be 20–255 charactersBlockingBLOCKING MSG-073HELP response must name the brand or programmeBlockingBLOCKING MSG-074HELP response must give a real support contactBlockingBLOCKING OPS-034A programme in another language still owes the English keywordHighHIGH OPS-035The mandatory keywords must work over MMS tooHighHIGH OPS-044Suppression is brand-wide, not per numberHighHIGH

All operational rules

OPS-081 is one of 139 operational rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.