Abandoned Call Rule: The FCC’s 3% Limit and the Dialer Logs to Keep

Three percent. That’s the share of live-answered telemarketing calls a company’s dialer may abandon under the FCC’s rule, measured for each calling campaign over 30-day periods. A call counts as abandoned when no sales representative comes on the line within two seconds of the person’s completed greeting, and each one needs a short recorded message with an opt-out. A company that keeps campaign-level dialer reports and call timing data can test an abandoned-call allegation against its own numbers.

What does the FCC’s abandoned call rule require?

It sets four requirements, found in 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(a)(6) and (a)(7).

The first requirement covers ring time, and under § 64.1200(a)(6) no one may “Disconnect an unanswered telemarketing call prior to at least 15 seconds or four (4) rings.”

The second is the rate cap, which bars a caller from abandoning “more than three percent of all telemarketing calls that are answered live by a person, as measured over a 30-day period for a single calling campaign,” according to § 64.1200(a)(7). A campaign that runs longer is measured separately for each successive 30-day period, or portion of one.

The third is the two-second clock. A call is abandoned if it isn’t connected to a live sales representative within two seconds of the called person’s completed greeting. When nobody is available, the seller or telemarketer must play a prerecorded message that, under § 64.1200(a)(7)(i)(A), discloses the call was for “telemarketing purposes,” names the business, and gives a number that takes do-not-call requests during regular business hours for the duration of the campaign. It must also offer an automated voice or key-press opt-out, and when someone uses it, the mechanism “must automatically record the called person’s number to the seller’s do-not-call list and immediately terminate the call,” under § 64.1200(a)(7)(i)(B).

The fourth is records. The seller or telemarketer “must maintain records establishing compliance with paragraph (a)(7) of this section,” per § 64.1200(a)(7)(iii).

A predictive dialer places calls before an agent is free, betting that some won’t be answered. When the bet is wrong, the person who answers hears silence, which is the “dead air” the rule targets.

How does the FCC define a calling campaign?

The FCC borrowed the FTC’s definition, so a campaign is the product being sold for one seller, not whatever label the dialer software uses.

When the FCC moved to per-campaign measurement in its 2012 TCPA order, it adopted the FTC’s definition of a campaign as “the offer of the same good or service for the same seller.” The order added that an offer stays part of one campaign “irrespective of whether telemarketing scripts used to convey the offer use or contain different wording.” The FCC explained that per-campaign measurement keeps callers from averaging abandoned calls across campaigns and pushing the drops onto less desirable consumers.

In my view, this is the easiest place to get the math wrong. Dialer software often lets users define a “campaign” by list or shift, which may not match the legal definition. If one dialer “campaign” mixes different offers or sellers, a clean blended report doesn’t prove each legal campaign stayed at or under 3%. If one offer is split across several dialer campaigns, the legal rate is the combined rate for the same 30-day window, so one list running over 3% isn’t by itself a violation. Map the dialer’s campaign IDs to the legal definition and line up the 30-day windows before relying on the reports.

The denominator matters just as much. The cap runs against calls “answered live by a person,” not against every call placed. In its 2003 TCPA order, the FCC said “a call that is disconnected upon reaching an answering machine will not be considered an abandoned call,” and calls that are never answered or that get a busy signal aren’t abandoned either. A report that divides drops by total dials will understate the rate.

Which calls fall outside the 3% rule?

Several do, but an existing customer relationship isn’t one.

Calls that aren’t telemarketing. Both paragraphs speak only to telemarketing calls, which the rule defines as calls made “for the purpose of encouraging the purchase or rental of, or investment in, property, goods, or services,” under § 64.1200(f)(13). Collection calls and appointment reminders without a sales pitch aren’t covered, though other TCPA rules may still apply to them.

Tax-exempt nonprofits. Calls by or for tax-exempt nonprofit organizations “are not covered by this paragraph (a)(7),” per § 64.1200(a)(7)(iv). The regulation’s text places that carve-out in (a)(7), and the ring-time paragraph has no express exemption, though the FCC’s 2003 order described its decision more broadly as not extending “the call abandonment rules” to tax-exempt nonprofits.

Prerecorded calls made with written consent. A prerecorded telemarketing message isn’t an abandoned call if the person gave prior express written consent and the message begins within two seconds of the greeting, under § 64.1200(a)(7)(ii).

Not an exception: an established business relationship. The FCC said in its 2003 order that “the existence of an established business relationship between the telemarketer and consumer will not be an exception to these rules.” A company that calls its own customers with a predictive dialer is held to the same 3% cap as a cold caller.

How does the FTC’s safe harbor compare?

The Telemarketing Sales Rule treats abandonment as a violation and then offers a safe harbor that tracks the FCC rule closely.

Under 16 C.F.R. § 310.4(b)(4), a seller avoids liability for abandoned calls if its technology keeps abandonment at or below 3% of calls answered by a person per campaign, it rings unanswered calls for at least 15 seconds or four rings, and it “promptly plays a recorded message that states the name and telephone number of the seller on whose behalf the call was placed” when no agent is free within two seconds. It must also keep records proving all of that.

Unlike the TSR, the FCC rule is a flat requirement, not a defense, and its message must include the automated opt-out mechanism, which the TSR safe harbor doesn’t list. And the TSR’s call-record rule, 16 C.F.R. § 310.5(a)(2), now requires a record of each call’s disposition, including “whether the call was answered, connected, dropped, or transferred.” Our February post on the Telemarketing Sales Rule covers who enforces the TSR and its broader recordkeeping rules.

What dialer records prove compliance?

Campaign-level abandonment reports and call-level data, plus the dialer settings behind them.

The FCC’s 2003 order says “Telemarketers must provide such records in order to demonstrate compliance with the call abandonment rules.” In my view, the records worth keeping fall into four groups.

The rate. Keep a report for each campaign and each 30-day period showing live answers, abandoned calls, and the resulting percentage, with the campaign defined the way the FCC defines it.

The two-second clock. Keep call-level data showing when the greeting ended and when an agent or the recorded message came on. In my view, answering-machine detection is the likeliest weak point. The FCC declined to ban detection software in its 2003 order, but only where “the delay in transfer time to a sales agent is limited to two seconds.” Detection that takes four seconds to decide turns live answers into abandoned calls.

Ring time. Keep the dialer’s no-answer timeout setting for each campaign and the change history showing when it was set.

The message. Keep the audio file and script for the abandoned-call message, along with the logs of key-press opt-outs it captured. Confirm that the do-not-call number in the message works during business hours for the life of the campaign. The message must stay an identification message. The FCC said in its 2003 order that “The message may not be used to deliver an unsolicited advertisement,” so a drop message that adds a promotion turns a compliance tool into a separate problem.

How do abandoned-call claims show up in complaints?

Often as one count among several in a Do Not Call or prerecorded-voice case, built on the plaintiff’s description of dead air or a delay.

Federal courts in Michigan have seen several of these counts, and they haven’t agreed on what a plaintiff must plead. In Dobronski v. Family First Life, LLC, a magistrate judge recommended dismissing an abandoned-call count and concluded that the message and opt-out provisions in § 64.1200(a)(7)(i) don’t stand on their own: “These subsections do not create causes of action.” The district judge adopted the report in part in March 2024, and with no objection on that point, the abandoned-call count wasn’t among the claims allowed to proceed.

In Dahdah v. Rocket Mortgage, LLC, the plaintiff alleged two calls of his own, one where no one came on the line and one with a delay of more than two seconds, and pointed to two similar calls described in another lawsuit. His count also alleged a missing opt-out message. The Eastern District of Michigan found the proposed count futile for lack of a plausible rate, stating: “The court finds it entirely implausible to extrapolate an abandonment rate in excess of 3% to Rocket based on these four calls.”

Other judges have read the rule differently. In Dobronski v. SelectQuote Insurance Services, decided January 14, 2025, a different Eastern District judge wrote that “The regulation does not state that it becomes necessary to use an opt-out mechanism only after a caller has abandoned three percent of calls.” That ruling leaned on thin briefing. The court noted that the defendants’ entire argument on the point was a single citation, said that “at this juncture” the plaintiff’s reading appeared correct, and declined to enter judgment for the defendants on the opt-out claim for one of two calls. In Owens v. Adroit Health Group, LLC, decided March 4, 2025, the Western District of Michigan let a count alleging delayed connection proceed, reasoning that “The abandonment rate is relevant only to a claim based on call abandonment, not one, as here, alleging the delayed connection of calls.” In the regulation’s text, though, the two-second clock defines when a call is abandoned. It isn’t a freestanding duty to connect, and that’s a point worth pressing against any delayed-connection count. The count dismissed in Family First Life was itself a delayed-connection theory.

The disagreement gives plaintiffs a reason to plead the missing message instead of the rate, since, under SelectQuote’s reading, that theory doesn’t require them to know a company’s numbers. Family First Life and Dahdah are the authority to cite against that move, though SelectQuote declined to follow Family First Life on a thin record, so the point needs full briefing. If the count survives a motion to dismiss, the message recordings and two-second data become central at summary judgment.

A related question is which part of the statute the abandonment rule falls under, because that decides which private action applies, if any. The TCPA’s private actions in 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(3) and (c)(5) provide $500 per violation under subsection (b), or actual loss if greater, and up to $500 under subsection (c), and a court may increase the award to up to $1,500 if it finds the violation willful or knowing. But each one reaches only the regulations prescribed under its own subsection. A subsection (c) claim also requires more than one call from the same entity within 12 months, and the statute gives a defense to a company that set up and carefully implemented reasonable procedures to prevent violations. None of these four decisions resolved which subsection applies, and in Owens the defendants argued for dismissal “assuming a private cause of action exists.” I’d brief it fully in any case that leans on an abandonment count. Our post on TCPA motions to dismiss covers the pleading attacks that apply to the rest of the complaint.

Dead air also shows up as supposed evidence that an autodialer placed the call, and our post on autodialer claims after Duguid explains why that theory is narrower than it sounds.

Claim theories and defenses at a glance

Claim theory	Rule	Exposure if a private claim is allowed	Defenses that answer it
Hung up before 15 seconds or four rings	47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(a)(6)	$500 per violation under § 227(b) or up to $500 under § 227(c), increased to up to $1,500 if willful or knowing	Ring-time settings and logs, no telemarketing purpose, private right of action unresolved
Abandoned more than 3% of answered calls	47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(a)(7)	$500 per violation under § 227(b) or up to $500 under § 227(c), increased to up to $1,500 if willful or knowing	Campaign-level rate reports, Dahdah and Family First Life rulings, nonprofit carve-out
No identification message or opt-out on an abandoned call	47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(a)(7)(i)	$500 per violation under § 227(b) or up to $500 under § 227(c), increased to up to $1,500 if willful or knowing	Message audio and two-second timing data, Family First Life ruling, call not telemarketing
FTC abandonment violation	16 C.F.R. § 310.4(b)(1)(iv)	Enforcement mainly by the FTC and state attorneys general	Safe harbor in § 310.4(b)(4) with retained records

If an abandoned-call allegation arrives

1. Put a litigation hold on the dialer’s call detail records and campaign reports, including configuration history, for the numbers and dates involved.
2. Export the opt-out log from the abandoned-call message, with dates, along with the internal do-not-call list entries it fed.
3. Pull the National Do Not Call Registry scrub records and the registry version dates for each campaign that reached the number.
4. Gather the dialer vendor contract, the call-center or lead-source agreements, the scripts, and the recorded message files.
5. Talk to a lawyer before responding to the claimant, calling the number again, or offering anything to settle.

The firm’s TCPA defense lawyers page summarizes how claims involving predictive dialers and abandoned calls are defended.

Questions call centers ask about abandoned calls

Does the 3% rule apply to our customer service or collection calls?

Not unless the calls are telemarketing. The rule’s text limits both paragraphs to telemarketing calls, meaning sales calls in the rule’s sense. A collection call or service update without a sales pitch falls outside it. Watch for dual-purpose scripts, though. A service call scripted to include an upgrade offer may be treated as telemarketing, and then the abandoned-call rule would apply to it.

Do calls that reach voicemail count against the 3%?

No. The FCC said in 2003 that a call disconnected upon reaching an answering machine isn’t an abandoned call, and calls that reach voicemail aren’t treated as answered by the called party. The catch is detection: a live answer that the software misreads as a machine and drops, or holds past two seconds, is an abandoned call. And the dialer must let unanswered calls ring at least 15 seconds or four rings before disconnecting.

Can the abandoned-call message mention a sale or promotion?

No. The rule limits the message to saying the call was for telemarketing purposes, naming the business, and giving a do-not-call number, plus the automated opt-out. The FCC warned in 2003 that even an incidental product reference could turn the message into a prohibited advertisement.

Defending an abandoned-call claim

If your company is facing a claim built on dead air or dropped calls, the dialer’s campaign reports and message recordings are usually the first evidence that matters. Rosenberger + Kawabata represents businesses defending TCPA lawsuits and class actions through its business litigation practice, including claims involving predictive dialers and abandoned calls. Contact Rosenberger + Kawabata online for a free and confidential consultation, or call (310) 894-6921.

Sources

The statute is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. § 227. The FCC’s abandoned-call and ring-time rules are at 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(a)(6)–(7), as published in the eCFR through March 22, 2025. The FTC’s rules are at 16 C.F.R. § 310.4 and 16 C.F.R. § 310.5, as published through the same date.

The FCC orders are the 2003 TCPA Report and Order, FCC 03-153, 18 FCC Rcd 14014 (2003), and the 2012 TCPA Report and Order, FCC 12-21, 27 FCC Rcd 1830 (2012).

The court decisions are Dobronski v. Family First Life, LLC, No. 2:22-cv-12039 (E.D. Mich. Jan. 19, 2024) (report and recommendation), adopted in part (E.D. Mich. Mar. 29, 2024); Dahdah v. Rocket Mortgage, LLC, No. 22-11863 (E.D. Mich. Sept. 26, 2024); Dobronski v. SelectQuote Insurance Services, No. 2:23-cv-12597 (E.D. Mich. Jan. 14, 2025); and Owens v. Adroit Health Group, LLC, No. 1:24-cv-547 (W.D. Mich. Mar. 4, 2025).

This post is general information about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and related laws as of March 22, 2025. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Courts and the FCC change the rules in this area often, and the outcome of any claim depends on its facts. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.