Texting old leads and TCPA: what Reddit says vs what applies.
Compliance threads are where dealer forums are least reliable, because the confident answers come from people quoting a rule they half-remember from 2019. Here is the shape of the actual obligation.
Texting a dormant dealership lead is generally permissible where the contact gave prior express consent at original opt-in and that consent has not been revoked — consent does not expire on a fixed timer. The real compliance work is operational: honouring opt-outs immediately, enforcing quiet hours, respecting do-not-call registries, registering the brand for A2P 10DLC, and keeping an audit log of every message sent.
The five things dealers keep saying.
Paraphrased themes, not quoted posts — the patterns that show up in thread after thread whenever this question gets asked.
- 01
The two loudest answers are both wrong
“You will get sued for texting anyone” and “nobody actually enforces TCPA” show up in the same thread. The first ignores prior express consent; the second ignores an active plaintiff’s bar that reads dealership texts for a living.
- 02
People confuse consent expiring with consent being revoked
A recurring belief is that consent goes stale after some number of months. The operative question is whether it was validly obtained and whether the customer has since revoked it — which is why opt-out handling is the part that actually has to be airtight.
- 03
A2P 10DLC gets mistaken for a formality
Threads treat carrier registration as paperwork, then report messages silently failing to deliver. It is both a compliance and a deliverability requirement, and skipping it degrades the channel before anyone sends a complaint.
- 04
Quiet hours and frequency are where stores actually trip
Less dramatic than a lawsuit and far more common: sends at 9pm, four messages in a week to the same contact, no throttle. This is what generates complaints, and complaints are what generate filings.
- 05
Nobody keeps records until they need them
The recurring regret in threads about actual claims is the absence of a per-message audit trail showing what was sent, to whom, when, and on what consent basis.
The operational version of the obligation
Treat compliance as a system rather than a judgment call, because a judgment call does not scale to a thousand sends a month.
That system is: only contact people who consented with you at original opt-in; process every opt-out immediately and permanently; scrub against do-not-call registries; enforce quiet hours in the recipient’s time zone; throttle send rate and cap per-contact frequency; register the brand for A2P 10DLC with the carriers; and log every message with its consent basis so the record exists before anyone asks for it.
Revvive handles all of that as infrastructure — carrier registration, opt-out management, quiet hours, throttling, and a full audit log on every message. Canadian stores get CASL handling on the same basis. None of this is legal advice, and your counsel should review your consent language and retention policy before you scale outreach.
What the math actually looks like.
Figures from Revvive’s dealer field data. See the proof page for how they were derived, or run the audit against your own rooftop.
The follow-up questions.
Is it legal to text a lead from two years ago?
Generally yes, where that contact gave prior express consent when they first engaged with your store and has not revoked it. Consent under the TCPA does not expire on a fixed schedule. What matters is that it was validly obtained, that revocations are honoured immediately, and that the send respects do-not-call registries and quiet hours. This is general information, not legal advice — have your counsel review your consent language.
What is A2P 10DLC and does a dealership need it?
A2P 10DLC is the carrier registration framework for application-to-person messaging sent from standard ten-digit numbers. Any dealership sending automated or bulk texts needs it. Without registration, carriers filter or block messages, so deliverability collapses quietly while the sending dashboard still reports success. Revvive registers your brand with the carriers as part of setup.
What are the quiet hours for dealership text messages?
The conventional standard is no messaging before 8am or after 9pm in the recipient’s local time zone, with some states imposing narrower windows and additional restrictions. Because the recipient’s time zone is what governs, this needs to be enforced by the sending system rather than by whoever happens to be scheduling the campaign.
How does Revvive handle TCPA and CASL compliance?
Compliance is built into the send path rather than left to the operator. Revvive registers your brand for A2P 10DLC, manages opt-outs and quiet hours, throttles send rate, only contacts records that consented at original opt-in, and keeps a full audit log of every message including its consent basis. CASL is handled on the same footing for Canadian rooftops.
This page summarizes recurring themes we see in public discussions among dealership staff, including on Reddit. It paraphrases those themes rather than reproducing posts, and contains no quoted comments or usernames. Revvive is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Reddit, Inc.
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