Opt-In Legal issues for USA Customers

  • Resolved erotic1

    (@erotic1)


    5 years, 2 months ago

    First, I’ve installed this plugin and it looks great! However, I’ve sent 2 messages to support directly regarding the Opt-in legality of using it over the least 3 weeks and have not received any response.

    My issue is that in the USA the law states that before you can send a message via SMS, you must ask the user to opt-in first. Thus, when a customer checks out, there needs to be a checkbox type option next to where they enter their phone number on the shipping/billing info pages. The checkbox should ask the user if he would like to opt-in for SMS notifications about his order status. Then if checked this should enable SMS messaging for this user. There should also be an option in the My Account area where the user can turn this option on and off.

    The law is very clear, “Effective Wednesday, October 15, 2013, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act passed a new rule that states any company that sends SMS marketing messages (texts to your cell phone) without prior written consent from recipients could potentially face fines of up to $1,500 per text.” Many companies have been prosecuted and fined 10’s of thousands and even millions for violating this Federal law. Obviously, I won’t take the risk.

    I must be missing something because, surely, with almost 5,000 installs of this plugin, there must be users in the USA using the BulkSMS platform. How is everyone in the USA handling this?

    Additionally, what do we do about opt in existing customers/users? Is there a way to send them a link that will allow them to opt-in for future orders?

    Thank you!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Author BulkGate

    (@woosms)

    Hi @erotic1,

    What you are referring to is a promotional (commercial) message – SMS marketing. To meet the CAN-SPAM act requirements, your customer really must opt-in to receive an SMS message that promotes or advertises a product or service.

    This, however, excludes SMS notifications (transactional message). These messages do not have to meet CAN-SPAM requirements. These are non-commercial messages that are unique to a customer and inform the customer about an existing transaction or relationship – e.g. a delivery notification.

    In the short future, we are going to implement the opt-in for customers who want to receive promotional messages as well.

    I hope this helps!

    If you have any other message, please let me know.

    Thread Starter erotic1

    (@erotic1)

    Hi @woosms,

    Thank you for your response. So, there is no opt-in needed for transactional messages but in my opinion, I feel like a customer/user should surely have the choice to opt-in to receive tranactional SMS. This functionality would be nearly identical to the opt-in for marketing messages. One simple way to do this would be to add an option under My Account where the user can toggle this option on an off. If this was present, we could send out an email to all existing customers notifying them of the new feature and where to go to enable it. You could also add the option to activate it next to the phone number field on the order info form along side of the opt in for marketing emails that you are going to add.

    Plugin Author BulkGate

    (@woosms)

    Hi @erotic1,

    You’re welcome and yes, what you’ve suggested sounds like a good idea at least for promotional purposes. But take this for example. If you need to send some code via SMS to your customer to finish an order, then without opt-in, the customer would not be able to finish the order. Therefore, opt-in doesn’t make much sense here. You could extend your terms & conditions and tell your customers that they may receive transactional messages about their order status.
    We’re currently busy building a new portal and adding alternative channels, but I’ll pass this to our IT team (about the promo opt-in feature).

    So thank you

    If anything, please contact us again!

    Have a nice day ??

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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