The envelope is addressed to the broker, and the broker forwards it to you at 4:15 on a Thursday with no comment. Inside is a letter from a law firm you have never heard of, on behalf of a homeowner whose name you half recognize, stating that the homeowner’s number has been on the National Do Not Call Registry since 2019, that it received two solicitation calls from your brokerage’s number on March 4 and March 11, and that the firm’s client is entitled to statutory damages under federal law and would prefer to resolve the matter without litigation. A figure is named. A deadline is given. The letter is polite in the way that letters written by people who do this every week are polite.<\/p>\n
You pull the record. Maple Court. An aged expired. Two attempts, both no answer, the second with a voicemail.<\/p>\n
Whether this letter is a problem or a formality now depends entirely on four things you did or did not do in February, before the first dial, and on what you do in the next hour.<\/p>\n
A demand letter, or a suit, from the homeowner.<\/strong> The federal do-not-call rules carry a private right of action at 47 U.S.C. 227(c)(5)<\/a>: a person who has received more than one call within any twelve-month period by or on behalf of the same entity in violation of the rules may sue for up to $500 per violation, and a court may treble that to $1,500 per violation if the violation was willful or knowing. Two calls to a registered number inside a year is the threshold, which is why the letter cites two dates. A handful of law firms and a larger number of individuals send these letters as a business, and some of them keep registered numbers specifically to receive solicitation calls. The letter is real regardless of who sent it. It is also, very often, a letter that the safe harbor answers, if the records exist.<\/p>\n A state attorney general or consumer protection office.<\/strong> The homeowner complained to the state, and the state’s telemarketing statute, per the state law piece<\/a>, gives the office its own remedies, sometimes its own private right of action for the resident, and sometimes hours and frequency rules stricter than the federal ones. A state inquiry usually arrives as a letter asking for records and an explanation within a set number of days, and the tone is different from a demand letter: the office wants to know whether this is a pattern.<\/p>\n A federal complaint.<\/strong> The homeowner filed with the FTC or the FCC. Individual complaints rarely produce individual enforcement, and neither agency represents the homeowner in getting money, but complaints accumulate against a number and a company, and a company with a file of them is the one that gets the civil penalty case. The FTC’s per-violation civil penalty figure, adjusted for 2025, is in the legality piece<\/a>; it is large enough that a pattern is the thing to fear, and a single complaint is the thing to fix so that it never becomes one.<\/p>\n