Calls, texts and Do Not Call: consent basics

Brokers call and text a lot of people, many of them bought as leads, and many small business owners give their personal cell as the business number. Contact laws count each call or text, some let the person contacted sue directly, and class actions are common. That combination makes calling and texting the area where most small shops get hurt.

"It is business to business" helps less than people think. A sole proprietor's mobile number is often treated like a personal number, and the rules on autodialed calls and texts to cell phones do not depend on whether the call is about business financing.

Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and FCC rules, marketing calls and texts to mobile numbers made with an autodialer or a prerecorded or artificial voice generally need the person's prior express written consent. In practice that means a clear statement the person agreed to, naming who may contact them and how, that is not a condition of the purchase, signed or checked by them, with proof you can produce.

One 2025 development matters for lead buyers: the FCC's one-to-one consent rule, which would have required consent to name each seller individually, was vacated and dropped, as our disclosure laws guide notes. That does not make vague consent safe. Consent obtained by a lead vendor is only as good as the vendor's form and records, and you need to be able to get those records.

• Web forms you control: strongest. You wrote the consent text and you hold the record.
• Purchased leads: ask the vendor for the form, the consent text, the timestamp and the page URL for each lead before you text it.
• Aged leads and lists: consent may be old, may not name you and may not cover texts. Treat them as call-by-hand only until the merchant agrees again.

1. The National Do Not Call Registry is a list of numbers telemarketers may not call without consent or another exemption. Sellers and telemarketers must access the registry and scrub their call lists on the schedule the FTC's rule sets. Business lines are generally outside it, but cell numbers of owners often are not.
2. State lists and laws. Several states keep their own lists or have their own telemarketing laws, some stricter than the federal rules, including on texts.
3. Your internal Do Not Call list. Anyone who asks you to stop goes on it, and stays on it across every rep, campaign and lead source. This is the list most often broken, usually because a lead is bought again from another vendor.

People can revoke consent by any reasonable means: replying STOP, saying "take me off your list" on a call, or emailing. Treat each as a full stop for that channel, record it, and make sure it reaches everyone who might contact that person. FCC rules set how quickly revocations must be honored; ask counsel for the current timeline.

The FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule guidance says that without prior consent, telemarketing calls to a person's home are not allowed before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. local time at the called location. Several states set narrower windows or limit calls on certain days. The simple rule: dial by the merchant's time zone, not yours.

Merchants who apply through your application link agree to consent text naming your company, and Ferrylend stores a consent record per channel (call, SMS, email) with the exact text and its version, the page, IP address, browser and time; it moves to the owner's contact when the lead is converted. Leads and merchants can be marked Do Not Contact, and a deal cannot move to Funder Reviewing File while its merchant is marked do not contact or an owner has revoked consent. SMS with opt-outs and quiet hours, the click-to-call dialer, email campaigns with one-click unsubscribe, and consent audits are all Coming soon.