# OPS-101 — Default to daytime hours even where nothing requires it

> Sending should be restricted to normal daytime business hours in the recipient's local time as a platform default.

- **Rule ID:** OPS-101
- **Layer:** Operational (`OPERATIONAL`)
- **Checks:** `default scheduled send window`
- **Severity:** MEDIUM — Usually survives review, but lowers your trust score or invites manual review.
- **When it bites:** Falls due after approval, once you are live and sending
- **How it is detected:** Not knowable before submission — reported with its deadline
- **Fix type:** Wait on an external system or a required interval
- **Required by:** AWS
- **Applies:** Applies to every 10DLC registration.
- **Canonical URL:** https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/operational/ops-101/

## Why this rule exists

The legal windows are the outer edges, and sending at their boundary is both lawful and a reliable way to generate complaints — a marketing message at 8:55pm is inside the federal window and reads as unacceptable to the person receiving it. Complaint volume is a carrier metric with consequences of its own, so the conservative default protects deliverability rather than only compliance.

## How to fix it

Set the platform default to business hours and require a deliberate override to send outside it. Done when sending at the edge of the legal window is a decision somebody made rather than the default.

## Example of a compliant value

```text
Platform default 10:00–19:00 recipient local; anything outside requires an explicit per-campaign override.
```

## Check this yourself

**Is sending at the edge of the legal window a decision somebody made, or your platform's default?**

1. Set the platform default to normal business hours in the recipient's local time.
2. Require a deliberate override to send outside it.

*What wrong looks like:* A marketing message at 8:55pm is inside the federal window and reads as unacceptable to the person receiving it — and complaint volume is a carrier metric with consequences of its own.

## Notes

A scheduler default we cannot see. What the user has to do is set it once — the value of this rule is that it makes every other timing rule harder to breach by accident.