If a demand letter or a lawyer's notice about texting lands on your campaign, the instinct is to panic or to ignore it. Both are mistakes. Here's a plain-language, non-legal-advice walkthrough of what's happening and how to respond, and why the work you did months earlier decides how this ends.
What a demand letter is
It's a claim, usually from a plaintiff's attorney, that your texts violated the TCPA, sent without consent, after a STOP, outside quiet hours, or to numbers on a do-not-contact list, and a demand for money to make it go away. Because the TCPA carries statutory damages per message, even a modest volume of allegedly non-compliant texts adds up fast, which is exactly why these letters exist.
What not to do
Don't ignore it, deadlines in these letters are real and default is expensive. Don't send more texts to the complaining number, and don't delete records, that looks like spoliation and makes everything worse. Don't respond substantively on your own; anything you write can be used. And don't assume "we're a campaign" is a defense, the TCPA applies to political texting.
What to actually do
Get it to a lawyer who knows the TCPA, immediately. Then preserve everything: your consent records, opt-out logs, send logs, and the audit trail for the specific number and messages at issue. This is the moment your earlier discipline pays off or costs you. A campaign that can produce a clean consent record and a timely STOP-honored log for that number is in a far stronger position than one that can't show how the number got on the list.
The lesson underneath
Every demand letter is really a test of your records. The defense against a TCPA claim isn't cleverness after the fact, it's the consent proof, opt-out honoring, and audit trail you maintained before the letter arrived. That's the whole case for treating compliance as the floor, not a feature.
Frequently asked questions
What is a TCPA demand letter?
A claim, usually from a plaintiff's attorney, that your texts broke the TCPA, no consent, texting after STOP, wrong hours, and a demand for payment. Statutory per-message damages make even modest volumes costly.
What should I not do?
Don't ignore it, don't text the complaining number again, don't delete records, and don't respond substantively yourself. Ignoring it invites default; deleting records looks like spoliation.
What decides the outcome?
Your records. A clean consent record, opt-out log, and audit trail for the number at issue is the real defense. That proof has to exist before the letter arrives, which is why compliance discipline matters year-round.
This isn't legal advice. It's why records matter. See the class-action risk campaigns face.
Keep reading: The complete TCPA guide and do campaigns need consent to text voters.