Note: This article is general information about how the TCPA tends to be applied to dealership SMS. It is not legal advice. If you receive a TCPA complaint or demand letter, talk to a lawyer.

Most outdoor power equipment dealers text customers. "Your mower is ready for pickup." "Your snowblower estimate is approved — we'll start tomorrow." "Reminder: your service appointment is Thursday at 9 AM." This is good customer service, and customers prefer it to phone tag.

It's also regulated. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) governs commercial SMS in the United States, and the penalties for violations are real: $500 to $1,500 per message in private lawsuits, and class actions for dealers who do it at scale. Most dealers don't realize how easy it is to be technically out of compliance — or how easy it is to fix.

What the TCPA actually says

The TCPA is a federal law from 1991, originally aimed at telemarketing robocalls. The FCC has updated it repeatedly to cover SMS, automated dialers, and modern marketing channels. The relevant rules for an OPE dealer texting customers boil down to a few key principles:

  • You generally need consent before sending non-emergency commercial texts to a customer's mobile number.
  • The level of consent required depends on whether the message is informational/transactional or marketing/promotional.
  • Customers have the right to opt out at any time, and you have to honor it promptly.
  • You can't text outside permitted hours (8 AM to 9 PM in the recipient's local time).
  • Keeping records of consent is on you, the sender.

Express vs. prior-written consent

The TCPA distinguishes between two levels of consent. Knowing which one you need depends on what you're sending.

Express consent is enough for transactional or informational messages — "Your mower is ready," "Your appointment is at 9 AM tomorrow," "Your invoice has been paid." Express consent can be given verbally, in writing, by check-box on a form, or by the customer initiating the texting relationship (e.g., texting your shop first).

Prior express written consent is required for marketing or promotional messages — "Spring tune-up specials," "20% off blade sharpening this week," "New Stihl chainsaws in stock." Prior written consent has to be in writing, has to clearly state that the customer is agreeing to receive marketing texts, and the agreement must not be a condition of purchasing anything.

The practical implication: if you want to text customers when their machine is ready, you can probably rely on the consent they gave when they handed you the unit and listed their cell number on the intake form. If you want to text them three months later about a winter promotion, you need a separate, explicit, written consent for marketing.

Capture consent on the intake form

The simplest practice for transactional messaging is to add a clear consent line to your intake form. Something like:

"By providing my mobile number, I agree that [Dealership Name] may contact me by SMS about my service ticket, including pickup notifications, estimates, and questions about the repair. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to unsubscribe."

Capture that the customer signed it. Date it. Keep the record. If a TCPA complaint ever comes in, that signed intake form is your defense.

For marketing consent, a separate checkbox during intake or signup is the cleanest: "Yes, I'd like to receive seasonal specials and dealership news from [Dealership Name] by SMS." This must be optional — the customer can decline this and still get service.

10DLC: the carrier registration framework

Beyond the legal consent requirement, the major US carriers (AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon) have their own registration framework called 10DLC (10-Digit Long Code). Any business sending SMS from a regular 10-digit number must register the brand and the campaign, answer questions about message content, and pay a small one-time and monthly fee.

If you skip 10DLC registration, your texts will work for a while and then start getting filtered as spam. Eventually they stop being delivered entirely. The fees are modest ($25–$50 one-time, a few dollars per month) and the registration is straightforward.

This is why Shop1's SMS add-on includes a one-time $25 setup fee — it's the carrier passthrough for 10DLC, not a markup. We don't pocket it; it goes directly to the carriers so your texts actually get delivered.

STOP and HELP: required keywords

Every SMS-sending business is expected to honor a small set of universal keywords:

  • STOP (also STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT) — the recipient is opting out. You must stop sending immediately, and you must reply once with a confirmation.
  • HELP — the recipient wants help. Reply with the dealership name, contact info, and a reminder of how to opt out.
  • START (also UNSTOP, YES) — the recipient is opting back in.

Any decent SMS platform handles these automatically. If yours doesn't, that's a red flag. You don't want to be on the receiving end of a TCPA suit because someone texted STOP and you kept sending pickup notifications anyway.

Quiet hours

The TCPA prohibits non-emergency commercial calls and texts before 8 AM or after 9 PM in the recipient's local time. For a dealership operating in a single time zone with local customers, this is easy. If you have customers across time zones, you need software that respects the recipient's time zone, not yours.

Practical reality: most OPE dealers send pickup notifications during business hours anyway, so quiet hours rarely cause friction. The trap is the after-hours service writer who decides to clear out the day's notifications at 9:30 PM. Don't.

Marketing vs. transactional: a useful test

If you're not sure whether a message is transactional (express consent OK) or marketing (prior written consent required), apply this test: does the message exist primarily to advance the customer's existing relationship with you, or primarily to sell them something new?

Transactional examples:

  • "Your mower is ready for pickup."
  • "Your estimate of $187.50 is ready — reply YES to authorize."
  • "Reminder: your service appointment is Thursday at 9 AM."
  • "Your invoice has been paid — thanks!"
  • "Recall notice: your unit is affected. Please call us."

Marketing examples:

  • "Spring tune-up special: $89 this week only."
  • "New Stihl chainsaws in stock!"
  • "Refer a friend, get $50 off your next service."
  • "Don't forget winter storage — book yours now."

The borderline cases (a polite "we noticed your last service was a year ago, would you like to schedule another?") tend toward marketing in the FCC's view. When in doubt, treat it as marketing and require written consent.

Recordkeeping

The single most useful thing a dealership can do for TCPA defense is keep records. Specifically:

  • For each customer phone number, when and how consent was obtained.
  • The text of the consent the customer agreed to.
  • Every message sent to that number, with timestamp.
  • Any STOP requests received and the timestamp the system stopped sending.

Most TCPA suits never make it to trial. They settle. The dealers who settle cheaply are the ones who can produce the consent record on demand. The ones who can't end up paying significantly more.

If you receive a TCPA demand letter

Most TCPA cases start as a demand letter from a plaintiff's attorney. Don't ignore it, and don't reply directly — talk to your own attorney first. Pull the consent records for the phone number in question, the message log, and the opt-out log. In many cases the dealer can show clean consent and the matter resolves without ever going to court. In some cases there was a real mistake (somebody texted a wrong number, or didn't honor a STOP) and the right move is to settle quickly.

The patterns to avoid: don't continue sending to a number that's complained, don't try to argue the law without counsel, and don't delete records that might be relevant.

A reasonable compliance checklist

  1. Add a consent line to your intake form covering transactional SMS.
  2. Add a separate optional checkbox for marketing SMS.
  3. Use SMS software that handles STOP/HELP/START automatically.
  4. Use SMS software that's 10DLC-registered.
  5. Don't text outside 8 AM–9 PM local time.
  6. Keep an audit log of consent, messages sent, and opt-outs.
  7. Treat marketing texts as a separate program with separate consent.
  8. If a customer ever expresses confusion about messages, opt them out and apologize.

None of this is hard. It is, however, easy to skip if nobody at the dealership knows it applies to them. Most TCPA exposure for dealers comes not from intentional marketing spam but from sloppy handling of basic transactional texting.

Shop1's SMS module captures consent at intake, handles STOP/HELP/START automatically, respects quiet hours, and keeps a per-customer audit log of every message and consent event. $25/month plus a one-time $25 carrier setup fee. Start a free 90-day trial to try it.