Telemarketing consent taken by phone must retain the recording of both halves
The requirementstatement
Where the Telemarketing Sales Rule applies and consent was spoken, a recording of both the request and the consent given must be retained, making the purpose clear.
- Severityseverity
- BlockingBLOCKINGBreaking this rule gets the submission rejected. There is no partial credit.
- When it bitesphase
- Gates approvalapprovalGet this wrong and the brand or campaign is refused at registration.
- What is checkedobject
- campaign.message_flow
- Where it liveslayer
- OperationalOPERATIONAL
- How Ekas settles itdetectability
- AI · formAI_FORM
- 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.
- What the fix involvesfailureClass
- Supply evidenceTERMINAL_EVIDENCE
- Needs proof only you hold: a screenshot, a recording, a scan of the form people signed.
- Who requires itauthorities
- FTC
- When it appliesapplicabilityText
- Applies when consent was collected by live verbal and IVR, and the use case is MARKETING, MIXED, SWEEPSTAKE and LOW_VOLUME.
Why this rule existsrationale
A recording that starts at "do you agree?" preserves the answer and loses the question, which is the half the FTC actually cares about — it is where the purpose is stated and where a leading or truncated ask would show. Contact centres cut it this way because the recording is triggered by the consent step rather than covering the disclosure that precedes it.
How to fix itremediation
Record the disclosure and the answer as one continuous recording, and retain it against the consumer record. Done when playing a single recording gives you the purpose, the ask and the agreement without a second file.
A compliant exampleexample
Verbal marketing opt-ins retain one recording per consent covering the full disclosure and the consumer's answer, indexed by call UCID.
Common mistakespitfalls
- Starting the recording at the consent question is the common configuration and it is the failure: the purpose is stated in the sentence before it.
Notesnotes
Where recording is not possible — the consumer declines, or an all-party-consent state applies — OPS-239 describes the fallback the programme must have instead. This rule is about what is retained, not about whether a recording satisfies the written-consent standard, which is CON-156.
Rules you will hit next
6 other rules read campaign.message_flow. Fixing one field to satisfy a single rule is how a resubmission trades one rejection for another, so read these before you change anything.
CMP-003Message flow must not begin or end with whitespaceBlockingBLOCKINGCMP-059Message flow must describe the mechanism end to endBlockingBLOCKINGCMP-060Every opt-in method in use must be listed in the message flowBlockingBLOCKINGCMP-061Each declared method needs its own complete workflow paragraphBlockingBLOCKINGCMP-072Message flow must state the message typesBlockingBLOCKINGCMP-073Message flow must state message frequencyBlockingBLOCKING
OPS-214 is one of 139 operational rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.