TPS screening and Do Not Call checks: a practical checklist for small sales teams calling the UK and the US

TPS screening is the dull step between getting a list and calling it, and it is the step regulators most often find missing when they fine a company for nuisance calls. Large call centres have a compliance person for it. A five-person sales team calling the UK or the US usually has a spreadsheet and a vague memory that someone checked it once.

This is a working checklist for screening against the UK’s Telephone Preference Service (TPS) and Corporate TPS (CTPS) and the US National Do Not Call Registry: when you need to, how to do it, how often, and what to keep so you can show it was done. It leaves the wider rules to LumaKol’s pages on UK calling rules: TPS, CTPS and PECR and US calling rules: TCPA and Do Not Call.

When screening applies, and when it does not

Both systems are aimed at unsolicited sales and marketing calls. A call the person asked for is treated differently, and in both countries a business call is handled differently from a call to a consumer.

Two points catch small teams out. In the UK, an old customer relationship does not override a later TPS registration. And in both countries, your own list of people who asked not to be called applies to everyone, registered or not.

The UK: screening against the TPS and CTPS

The Telephone Preference Service describes itself as the UK’s only official “Do Not Call” register, covering landlines and mobile numbers. Individuals, including sole traders and some partnerships, register with the TPS. Companies and other corporate bodies register with the CTPS. Unsolicited live marketing calls to registered numbers are against the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), which the Information Commissioner’s Office enforces.

How often

The TPS says organisations are required to screen against the TPS and CTPS at least once every 28 days. The ICO adds that it can take 28 days for a new registration to become active, so a list screened six weeks ago may now contain numbers you must not call. If you buy a list that a supplier says is screened, the ICO’s guidance on live marketing calls says you should check that the screening happened recently, and that you remain responsible for complying before you call.

How

There are two common routes. Many teams use a list-cleaning service: you upload the numbers, the service returns them marked against the TPS and CTPS, and you keep the report. The TPS website links to a list of list cleaners. Organisations that call often can instead license the register data through the TPS licensee portal and screen in-house. Either way, the result you want is the same: a list with registered numbers removed, a date, and a record of what was checked.

Screening is one part of the UK rules. Calling a registered number someone has told you they do not object to, what callers must say, and the bans on claims management and pensions cold calls are summarised on LumaKol’s UK calling rules page.

The US: checking the National Do Not Call Registry

The FTC’s Q&A for telemarketers and sellers sets out how access works. Sellers use the registry only through its website, telemarketing.donotcall.gov. You subscribe to the area codes you call, and you receive a subscription account number that any telemarketer calling for you must use. Data for up to five area codes is free; beyond that there is an annual fee per area code.

• Synchronise your calling lists with the registry at least every 31 days.
• Keep a company-specific do-not-call list and honour requests not to be called, whether or not the number is on the national registry.
• Some states keep their own do-not-call lists and calling rules, so check the states you call.

The FTC also describes a safe harbour for a call made to a registered number by mistake. To rely on it you need, as routine practice, written procedures, trained staff, monitoring of those procedures, a company-specific do-not-call list, registry access no more than 31 days before calling with records that document it, and evidence that the call was an error. The FTC’s Q&A says violators may face fines of up to $53,088 per violation, and that each call may count as a separate violation.

Calling hours and automated dialling are separate questions under the TCPA. LumaKol’s US calling rules page summarises them, and Auto-dial or tap to call covers how dialling method affects the rules.

A screening routine a small team can keep

1. Label every lead with its source on the way in. The source tells you whether screening applies: a form the person submitted is a request; a bought list or a scraped directory is not.
2. Screen before you import, never after. A list that reaches agents’ phones unscreened will be called by someone before the check catches up.
3. Keep the screening report: the file, the date, the service used and which registers were checked. Store it with the list, not in someone’s inbox.
4. Put a date on every screened list and re-screen anything older than 28 days (UK) or 31 days (US) before the next calling session.
5. Remove your own do-not-call list as well as the national registers, and never delete the record of someone who objected.
6. When someone says they do not object to your calls despite a TPS registration, write down the date, who took it and their words.
7. Once a month, check a sample: pick ten recent calls to cold leads and confirm each number was screened inside the window.

What to keep on record

Where LumaKol fits

LumaKol does not screen numbers against the TPS, the CTPS, the National Do Not Call Registry or any state list, so screening happens before the upload. What it does is keep your own records and stop calls to people who objected.

• Every lead keeps its source and the date it arrived, and custom fields can hold a screening date, a screening reference or the wording of a notification.
• The outcome “Requested no contact” moves the lead to Lost and out of every queue. With “Block calls to leads who asked not to be contacted” switched on, which is the default, the apps refuse to dial that lead at all.
• Imports skip any row whose number is already in the workspace, and the existing lead keeps its history. So keep opted-out leads rather than deleting them: delete one and import the number again later, and the new lead is not blocked.
• Calling hours (by default 9:00 to 20:00, Monday to Saturday, or 10:00 to 20:00 for a workspace based in India) are checked against the clock on the agent’s phone, not the lead’s local time, so set hours that are safe for every time zone you call.
• Agents cannot upload their own leads unless an admin allows it, which keeps unscreened lists out of the queue.

The guide Import leads and assign them covers the upload, and How to import leads from Excel without importing a mess has a pre-import checklist where the screening step fits.

Sources

• Telephone Preference Service, What is TPS
• Information Commissioner’s Office, How do we comply with the rules on live marketing calls?
• Information Commissioner’s Office, Telephone marketing
• Federal Trade Commission, Q&A for telemarketers and sellers about DNC provisions in the TSR