Federal rules permit telephone solicitations between 8am and 9pm in the called party’s time zone, and several states are tighter than that. The mistake almost every expanding floor makes is running the dialler on office hours — a 9am start on the east coast is a 6am call in California, which is a violation before anyone has said anything.
This is the cheapest compliance failure to avoid and one of the most common, because it is invisible from inside a single-office floor. Nobody in the room is doing anything unusual; the dialler is simply calling people for whom it is the wrong time.
| Office time (ET) | What it is in PT | Permitted? |
|---|---|---|
| 8:00am | 5:00am | No |
| 9:00am | 6:00am | No |
| 11:00am | 8:00am | Yes |
| 5:00pm | 2:00pm | Yes |
| 9:00pm | 6:00pm | Yes |
The east-to-west problem is a morning problem and the west-to-east problem is an evening one. A California floor calling New York at 5pm local is calling at 8pm, which is inside the federal window and outside some state ones.
Calls placed at 6am do not fund deals. They wake people up, they burn a record you paid for, and they produce exactly the complaints that lead to suppression requests and worse. The compliance case and the conversion case point the same direction here, which is not true of every rule.
Federally, between 8am and 9pm in the called party’s time zone. Several states are tighter, so a national floor should either geo-fence by state or run everywhere at the strictest applicable window.
The merchant’s, not yours. This is the mistake floors make when they expand — a 9am east-coast start is a 6am call in California, which is a violation before the rep has said anything.
Treat them as though they do. Several states address texts explicitly and some apply different windows, so applying the voice window to SMS is the safe default unless you have checked otherwise.
Only as a fallback. Mobile numbers travel with their owners, so an area code is weak evidence of location — use the business address the application captured where you have it.
Yes. A 6am call does not fund a deal, it burns a record you paid for and it generates the complaints that produce opt-outs. The compliance case and the conversion case agree here.
We will tell you straight up if we cannot help you. No commission deals, no free trials, no chasing you for three weeks.