After you resolve it: what to keep, what to fix, and what can still happen

A signed agreement and a cleared payment end the claim on the listed numbers. They do not end the exposure on the rest of your list. The weeks after a settlement are when a business either fixes the practice that produced the letter or sets up the next one. Here is what to keep, what to change, and what can still arrive in the post.

Close the file properly

1. Confirm the payment landed. Ask the sender for written confirmation that the agreement has been performed.
2. Store the agreement, the call list, the payment confirmation and the correspondence together. Keep them for at least four years from the last call in the release (28 U.S.C. § 1658), and longer if the agreement has ongoing obligations.
3. Add the released numbers to your internal do-not-call list permanently. Calling one of them again is a new violation and a breach of the agreement.
4. Note the confidentiality terms and tell anyone who needs to know what they may not say.
5. If you intend to pursue the vendor, send your claim now, while the documents are fresh.

Fix the practice

The letter came from a specific failure. Find it and fix that one first, then the rest.

• Consent. For marketing calls or texts to mobiles by automated means, capture prior express written consent that names your business, says consent is not a condition of purchase, and records the number, date, time and source. Keep it per number, searchable, for four years after the last contact.
• Do-not-call scrubbing. Scrub against the National Do Not Call Registry before each campaign using a registry download no more than 31 days old. Keep the scrub records. Maintain your internal do-not-call list and honour requests promptly.
• Opt-outs. Treat STOP, any reasonable revocation by text, and spoken do-not-call requests as ending consent. The FCC's rules require revocations to be honoured within ten business days. Sooner is cheaper.
• Calling hours. 8am to 9pm in the called party's local time under federal law. Florida and some other states set narrower windows and cap call attempts. Check the state rules for every state you call.
• Autodialers and recorded voice. Know whether your dialer meets the autodialer definition the Supreme Court set in Facebook v. Duguid (2021), and treat any prerecorded, artificial or AI-generated voice as requiring consent. The FCC confirmed in 2024 that AI-generated voices are "artificial" under the TCPA.
• Vendors. Put consent, scrubbing, calling-hour and record-keeping obligations into the contract, with an indemnity and a right to audit. A vendor who will not sign that is telling you something.
• Logs. Keep the dialer logs. Turn off auto-deletion. The records that make a dispute possible are the ones businesses delete.

What can still arrive

• A letter about different numbers. The release covers the listed numbers for the stated period. Other recipients have their own claims.
• A letter from a different sender about the same campaign. Same answer: reconcile, check the release, respond.
• A claim from the vendor's side if you withheld payment from them. Handle it as the contract dispute it is.
• An insurer's position letter if you notified a claim. Read it.

Why it does not have to happen twice

The settlement was the price of calls made without the records to defend them. The fix is not to stop outbound. It is to run outbound with the consent, scrubbing and logging in place that would have made this letter a two-paragraph dispute instead of a payment.