The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Thursday approved its proposal on revocation of consent under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The rule approved Thursday reflects several changes requested by America’s Credit Unions—and its legacy organizations prior to the merger—during its engagement with the FCC on the subject.
The rule aims to strengthen consumers’ ability to revoke consent for robocalls and robotexts. It also addresses several credit union concerns brought up during the process.
Credit unions expressed concerns with a proposed requirement to honor all revocation requests within 24 hours. The rule adopted Thursday requires robocallers/texters to honor do not call and consent requests, “within a reasonable time from the date that the request is made, not to exceed 10 business days after receipt of the request.”
America’s Credit Unions has also shared with the commission that consumer revocation requests are not applied to a broader category of messages than the consumer requests, for example, consumers would likely still wish to receive multi-factor authentication texts to access their account.
Thursday’s rule notes the FCC agrees with “financial institutions’ concerns that consumers may inadvertently opt out of exempted informational calls or messages such as fraud alerts when attempting to stop unwanted telemarketing calls” from their financial institutions.
“Therefore, in effect, when a consumer revokes consent with regard to telemarketing robocalls or robotexts, the caller can continue to reach the consumer pursuant to an exempted informational call, which does not require consent, unless and until the consumer separately expresses an intent to opt out of these exempted calls,” it reads.
Comments will be accepted on the rule for 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register, with reply comments due 15 days after that.
