WASHINGTON—As CUNA continues to advocate for clarification to the FCC’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act Order, the trade association is also seeking to clear up what it says has been some confusion in the CU space surrounding the Order.
“There has been some confusion, resulting from information shared in the public space, surrounding what the FCC has mandated in terms of consent to make informational calls using an automated telephone dialing systems (autodialer) to a consumer’s cell phone,” explained Leah Dempsey, senior director of advocacy and counsel at CUNA, who said . “If the autodialed/prerecorded call/text to a wireless number is not for telemarketing or advertising purposes (i.e., an informational call), the Commission has said that the prior express consent may be oral or written.”
Dempsey explained that the consumer's prior express written consent is required for telemarketing calls/text messages made to mobile phones using an automated telephone dialing system (ATDS) or prerecorded message. In addition, the prior express written consent rules will apply to informational calls/texts that also contain any advertising message, she said.
“We want to make sure that credit unions understand what the FCC has said about consent in the TCPA Order, so that important communications with members are not unnecessarily even further limited in certain instances,” she said. “CUNA has been advocating for clarifications to the TCPA Order, and we outlined some of our concerns surrounding the issue of consent in the Amici brief we filed in support of the litigation challenging the TCPA Order late last year. We would encourage credit unions to look to CUNA’s compliance resources such as our e-Guide for more information about TCPA compliance.”