The question every business asks after reading a TCPA demand is whether to pay it. The honest answer is that it depends on the numbers, and the numbers can be worked in an afternoon. This is how to do it.
Start with the exposure
Count the calls and texts in the letter. Each is a violation at $500 under 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(3) or § 227(c)(5). If the conduct was willful or knowing, a court can treble that to $1,500. Conduct is knowing when the business knew the number was on the registry, or kept calling after a STOP, or had been told before. A demand letter itself puts the business on notice, which is why calls after the letter are the most expensive calls a business can make.
Then widen the frame. The claim in the letter is one recipient. The same dialer, list and script reached everyone else on the list, and the federal limitation period is four years. A business that made the calls in the letter almost always made thousands of others like them, and any of those recipients can bring the same claim. Where a state statute applies, Florida’s Telephone Solicitation Act being the common one, add its own $500 to $1,500 per violation.
What a resolution buys
A resolution at the demand stage closes the recipient’s claim. The matter is not referred to counsel, no complaint is filed and nothing is placed on a public docket. The business pays a figure that is set below the statutory exposure because it is cheaper for the recipient to resolve too. That discount is the whole reason the demand stage exists.
What a contested matter costs
A business that declines to resolve and is sued pays its own lawyers from the first letter to the last, win or lose. A contested TCPA case means motion practice, discovery of dialer logs, vendor contracts and consent records, and often expert evidence on the dialing system. Discovery also exposes the whole calling programme to the other side, which is how one recipient’s claim becomes a class action. Many general liability policies exclude TCPA claims outright, so the defence is usually paid from the business’s own funds. Set those costs against the demand figure and the arithmetic is rarely close.
When a dispute is the right answer
Resolving is not always right. If the calls in the letter were not made by or for your business, say so, with records. If you hold prior express written consent for each number, in the form the FCC’s rules require, produce it. If the number was reassigned and you checked the reassigned numbers database before dialing, that is a defence. A dispute that comes with evidence is reviewed on the evidence. A dispute that is a denial without records changes nothing and uses up the deadline.
The decision
Put the exposure figure, the demand figure and an estimate of defence costs on one page. If the calls are yours and the consent file is thin, the demand is the lowest number on the page and the only one that comes with certainty. If the calls are not yours or the consent is documented, dispute the items that fail and resolve the ones that stand. Either way, decide before the deadline and respond in writing. The process for a letter from LAC is set out at I received a letter. Now what?. A business with counsel should take this page to them. Nothing here is legal advice.