Default to daytime hours even where nothing requires it

The requirementstatement

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

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: default scheduled send window
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: AWS
When it appliesapplicabilityText: Applies to every 10DLC registration.

Why this rule existsrationale

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 itremediation

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.

A compliant exampleexample

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

Check this yourselfattestation

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

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

1Set the platform default to normal business hours in the recipient's local time.
2Require 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.

Notesnotes

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.

Rules you will hit next

Other operational rules at the same severity. A registration is judged as a whole, not rule by rule.

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 OPS-062An opted-out consumer must be able to come backMediumMEDIUM

All operational rules

OPS-101 is one of 139 operational rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.