{"id":220,"date":"2026-09-07T11:43:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T16:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realdialer.com\/how-long-to-keep-cold-call-records\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T15:20:33","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T20:20:33","slug":"how-long-to-keep-cold-call-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/realdialer.com\/how-long-to-keep-cold-call-records\/","title":{"rendered":"How Long to Keep Cold Call Records and Recordings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before a brokerage makes another prospecting call, it should decide, once, how long everything the calls produce is kept, write the decision on one page, and stop letting the dialer decide by default. Most brokerages have never made this decision. The call logs live wherever the dialer puts them, for as long as the dialer’s plan allows, and the recordings roll off after ninety days because that was the setting when the account was opened. Then a letter arrives, per the complaint piece<\/a>, asking about two calls in March of last year, and the records that would have answered it were deleted in June.<\/p>\n

The decision is easier than it looks, because the law now supplies the number. The Telemarketing Sales Rule’s record-keeping section, 16 CFR 310.5<\/a>, requires sellers and telemarketers to keep a specific set of records for five years from the date each record is produced, and the set covers most of what a dialer generates. The rest of the decision is about the things the rule does not name, recordings chiefly, and about the mechanics of keeping five years of anything without losing it.<\/p>\n

What the rule requires, applied to a dialer<\/h2>\n

The rule lists categories, and each one maps onto something a prospecting operation already produces.<\/p>\n

Call detail records.<\/strong> The number called, the number calling, the date, the time, the duration and the disposition of every outbound call. This is the dialer’s log, and it is now a record the rule requires for five years. A dialer that exports it is doing the brokerage a favor. A dialer that purges it at ninety days has to be exported from monthly, and the export kept. The export should be readable without the dialer, which means a plain file rather than a proprietary one, and it should carry the disposition in words rather than a code that only the vendor’s manual explains. Check it once a quarter by pulling a random week and confirming the calls are there. A log nobody has ever opened is a log nobody can vouch for.<\/p>\n

Do-not-call requests.<\/strong> The name, the number and the date of every homeowner who asked not to be called. This is the internal list, and the FCC’s rule at 47 CFR 64.1200(d)(6)<\/a> independently requires that the request be honored for five years, so the two rules agree: five years, minimum, and in practice the list is kept indefinitely because there is no reason to ever call a person who asked you not to.<\/p>\n

Registry access records.<\/strong> Which version of the National Do Not Call Registry was accessed, when, and for which campaign. This is the scrub record the do-not-call rules<\/a> piece describes and the complaint piece calls the first of the four records. Under the current rule it is required, not merely prudent.<\/p>\n

Consent records.<\/strong> Any express consent a homeowner gave, the request that produced it, and the date. On a cold list this is rare; when it exists, when a homeowner agreed on a recorded call to receive the circle note<\/a> by text, the recording of that agreement is the consent record and is kept as one.<\/p>\n

Scripts and other advertising.<\/strong> Copies of substantially different scripts, mailers and messages. Every script on this site is a document with a date, and each version a brokerage adopts is filed with the date it went into use, so that the words an agent used in March of last year can be produced.<\/p>\n

Employee records and service provider contracts.<\/strong> Who made calls, in what role, and the agreements with any company that placed calls on the brokerage’s behalf, including an ISA firm or a dialer vendor that provides numbers.<\/p>\n

Five years, from the date each record is produced. That is the floor. Not the ceiling.<\/p>\n

Why the number is five and not something shorter<\/h2>\n

Two other clocks point the same way. The FCC’s five years on stop requests is one. The other is the limitations period for private suits: civil claims under federal statutes enacted after 1990 carry a four-year period under 28 U.S.C. 1658(a)<\/a> unless the statute says otherwise, and courts have generally applied that four years to private claims under the telephone consumer protection law. A homeowner can therefore file over a call made nearly four years ago, and a brokerage whose records run five years can answer. State statutes have their own periods, some shorter and some longer, and the brokerage’s counsel should confirm none of them exceed five years in the states the brokerage calls into; where one does, the policy follows the longer number.<\/p>\n

Storage is not the burden. A year of call detail records for a busy team is a spreadsheet. The burden is remembering. That is what the policy is for.<\/p>\n

Recordings are a different question<\/h2>\n

The Telemarketing Sales Rule does not require call recordings to exist or to be kept, with one exception: where a recording is the record of a homeowner’s consent, it is a consent record and falls under the five years. Everything else about recordings is a decision the brokerage makes, and the decision has two halves.<\/p>\n

Recordings that are evidence are kept five years, with the records they support. That means the recording of any call in which a homeowner gave consent to anything, the recording of any call in which a homeowner asked not to be called, and the recording of any call that later becomes the subject of a complaint, a demand letter, or a dispute with the homeowner about what was said. The recording consent<\/a> piece adds a rule this policy inherits: a recording kept because the homeowner asked not to be called is kept as proof of the request and is never played for coaching.<\/p>\n

Recordings that are not evidence, the ordinary run of declines and no-answers and short conversations, are kept for a fixed shorter period, long enough to serve the coaching program<\/a> and the practice method<\/a>, and then deleted on schedule. Ninety days to a year is a defensible range. Pick one. The reason not to keep every recording for five years is that recordings are voices, addresses and personal circumstances, and a brokerage holding tens of thousands of them has a security obligation it did not sign up for. Keep what the rules and the complaint require; delete the rest on a calendar; and never let the deletion schedule run past the moment a call becomes evidence. That is the next section.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Record<\/th>\nMinimum<\/th>\nThe rule<\/th>\nThe policy line<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Call detail records: numbers, date, time, duration, disposition<\/td>\n5 years from the call<\/td>\n16 CFR 310.5<\/td>\nExported monthly from the dialer; kept in the brokerage’s own storage<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Internal do-not-call requests: name, number, date<\/td>\n5 years; kept indefinitely in practice<\/td>\n16 CFR 310.5; 47 CFR 64.1200(d)(6)<\/td>\nNever deleted; the flag is permanent<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Registry access records: version, date, campaign<\/td>\n5 years<\/td>\n16 CFR 310.5<\/td>\nThe scrub report filed with each list, dated<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Consent records, including recordings of consent<\/td>\n5 years from the consent<\/td>\n16 CFR 310.5<\/td>\nTagged as consent at the time; excluded from the deletion schedule<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Scripts, mailers, messages, each substantially different version<\/td>\n5 years from last use<\/td>\n16 CFR 310.5<\/td>\nDated copies filed when adopted and when retired<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Employee records; service provider contracts<\/td>\n5 years<\/td>\n16 CFR 310.5<\/td>\nKept with the procedures document<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Recordings that are evidence: consent, stop requests, disputed or complained-of calls<\/td>\n5 years<\/td>\nThe brokerage’s policy, matching the records they support<\/td>\nTagged when identified; held; never played for coaching if they hold a stop request<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Recordings that are not evidence<\/td>\n90 days to 1 year<\/td>\nThe brokerage’s policy<\/td>\nDeleted on schedule; schedule suspended by any hold<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Everything, once a letter or complaint arrives<\/td>\nUntil counsel releases it<\/td>\nThe litigation hold<\/td>\nDeletion stops for that number, that list and that period, the same day<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

The litigation hold<\/h2>\n

The complaint piece’s second rule is do not delete anything, and the retention policy is where that rule lives before the letter arrives. A litigation hold is a sentence in the policy and a switch in practice: when a complaint, a demand letter, a regulator’s inquiry or a homeowner’s dispute arrives, the deletion schedule stops for every record touching that number, the list it came from, and the period in question, and nothing is deleted until counsel says so. The person who receives the letter triggers the hold the same day, before the broker has finished reading it. The recording schedule does not know a letter came. Someone has to tell it.<\/p>\n

Security, briefly<\/h2>\n

Five years of call records and a smaller set of recordings is a store of personal information: names, numbers, addresses, and in the recordings, voices and circumstances. The policy says who can access it, that recordings are never emailed or texted, that exports live in the brokerage’s storage rather than on an agent’s laptop, and what happens when an agent leaves. State breach-notification laws reach a brokerage the same way they reach any business holding personal data, and a store nobody decided to keep is the one nobody secured.<\/p>\n

The one-page policy<\/h2>\n

The decision, written down, fits on a page: the record categories and their periods, per the table; the recording rule in two sentences, evidence for five years and everything else on a schedule; the litigation hold and who triggers it; the storage location and who has access; and the date the policy was adopted, with the broker’s signature and each agent’s. It sits beside the do-not-call procedures the safe harbor<\/a> requires, and it is reviewed once a year, or when the rules move.<\/p>\n

The compliance hub<\/a> covers the calling rules across jurisdictions. Retention is the rule that decides whether any of the others can be proven, and it is the one most brokerages have never written down. Five years, decided once, on one page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most brokerages have never decided how long call logs, scrub records, stop requests, scripts and recordings are kept, which means the dialer decides, usually by deleting them. The Telemarketing Sales Rule now requires five years for most of it. What has to be kept, for how long, what recordings are and are not, the litigation hold, and the one-page policy that settles it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_realdialer_meta_description":"Most brokerages have never decided how long call logs, scrub records, stop requests, scripts and recordings are kept, which means the dialer decides, usually by deleting them. The Telemarketing Sales Rule now requires five years for most of it. What has to be kept, for how long, what recordings are and are not, the litigation hold, and the one-page policy that settles it.","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-calling-compliance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/realdialer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/realdialer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/realdialer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realdialer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realdialer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/realdialer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314,"href":"https:\/\/realdialer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions\/314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realdialer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/realdialer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realdialer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realdialer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}