Disclaimer: This is general guidance, not legal advice. TCPA enforcement is fact-specific and carrier rules change. When in doubt, run your opt-in language and consent flows past an attorney who actually works telecom compliance.
If you’re going to send SMS to homeowners — appointment confirmations, “tech is on the way” updates, review requests, seasonal tune-up offers — you have to do it the right way. The HVAC Snapshot for GHL ships with TCPA and 10DLC compliance wired in by default, but you still need to do the registration and your team needs to understand the rules. Here’s the plain-English version.
What TCPA and 10DLC actually mean
TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) is the federal law that governs automated calls and texts to consumers. It requires prior express written consent for marketing SMS and prior express consent for service-related SMS. Violations are $500-$1,500 per message, and plaintiff lawyers love it.
10DLC (10-Digit Long Code) is the U.S. carrier framework — AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon — that requires businesses to register before sending application-to-person SMS from a regular phone number. Unregistered traffic gets filtered, throttled, or blocked. Registration happens through The Campaign Registry (TCR) and is handled inside GHL.
1. Register the brand
Your brand is your business identity at TCR. You’ll submit:
- Legal entity name (matching your EIN exactly — not a DBA)
- EIN
- Physical address
- Business type (LLC, S-Corp, etc.)
- Vertical (HVAC / home services)
- Website URL with the privacy policy and SMS terms visible
Verification usually clears in hours. If your EIN doesn’t match your legal entity name perfectly, it bounces — fix the typo, resubmit.
2. Register the campaign use case
The campaign is what you’re going to send. For an HVAC shop, the right pick is almost always “Low Volume Mixed” — it covers:
- Service notifications (your tech is on the way, your AC tune-up is tomorrow at 10am)
- Transactional confirmations (booking confirmed, invoice paid)
- Marketing offers (spring tune-up special, fall furnace tune-up coupon)
Avoid pure-marketing campaigns unless you’re sending high volume with a single use case — they have stricter rules and lower throughput.
You’ll need 2-4 sample messages. Good examples:
- “Hi [Name], this is Mark at Smith HVAC. Our tech Jake is 15 minutes out for your no-heat call. Reply STOP to opt out.”
- “Spring tune-up special — $89 AC check, includes coil rinse and filter check. Book at [link]. Reply STOP to opt out, HELP for info.”
Carrier approval typically takes 1-3 business days.
3. Write opt-in copy that meets carrier standards
Every place a homeowner enters their phone number — your instant quote form, the booking widget, the missed-call text-back reply, the coupon funnel opt-in, the maintenance plan signup — must include explicit consent language. The carrier-acceptable pattern:
“By providing your phone number, you agree to receive SMS messages from [Your HVAC Co] about appointments, service updates, and occasional offers. Message and data rates may apply. Message frequency varies. Reply STOP to opt out, HELP for help. See our Privacy Policy and SMS Terms.”
The Privacy Policy and SMS Terms links must actually resolve and must be visible to a homeowner at the moment they tick the box. Pre-checked boxes are a violation in some jurisdictions and a carrier red flag everywhere — leave them unchecked.
For offline intake (a CSR taking a call), the right move is verbal consent captured in the contact note plus a confirmation SMS that contains the opt-in language.
4. Configure STOP, HELP, and UNSUBSCRIBE keywords
These are not optional. The HVAC Snapshot ships them configured, but verify on your account:
- STOP, STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT → opt the contact out of all marketing SMS immediately, send the carrier-required confirmation message, and tag the contact as Do Not Text
- HELP, INFO → auto-reply with your business name, support contact, and a link to terms
- START, YES → re-subscribe if previously opted out (only with prior consent on file)
The HVAC Snapshot tags every opted-out contact so they’re excluded from every future automation — including seasonal tune-up campaigns, maintenance plan renewals, and the review engine.
5. Set quiet hours and timezone rules
TCPA’s safe-harbor window for marketing calls and texts is 8am to 9pm in the recipient’s local timezone. Service-related messages have more flexibility (a “tech is en route at 7am for your no-heat call” message is reasonable), but treat marketing SMS as 8am-9pm only.
Inside the snapshot, quiet hours are enforced per-contact based on their stored timezone. If you don’t have a timezone for a contact, the system defaults to the shop’s local timezone — but for multi-state service areas, store the homeowner’s timezone at intake.
6. Verify the audit log
For every SMS-eligible contact, the snapshot stores:
- Opt-in source (which form, which page, which date)
- Exact consent language shown at opt-in
- Timestamp
- IP address (for web forms)
- Any STOP / HELP / START events with timestamps
This audit trail is your defense if a TCPA complaint ever lands. Spot-check it: pull up a contact, look at the SMS Consent tab, and confirm there’s a source. If a contact has no consent record, do not text them. Period.
Specific HVAC gotchas
- Past customers in a spreadsheet. Importing 5,000 old customer phone numbers and blasting a tune-up offer is the fastest way to a TCPA suit. Drip them via email first and earn the SMS opt-in fresh.
- Wrong-number protection. When a phone number changes hands, the old opt-in doesn’t follow. Use the snapshot’s number-reassignment check, especially for contacts that haven’t been touched in 18+ months.
- A2P versus P2P. Your tech texting “I’m 10 minutes out” from their personal phone is P2P (person-to-person) and not regulated under 10DLC. Anything automated from your business line is A2P and must be registered.
- Quiet-hours exception for emergencies. A homeowner who texts your number first (“AC is out, can someone come tonight?”) has effectively consented to a service reply outside quiet hours. Marketing follow-up still needs to wait.
Got all this set up? Good. Now you can actually use SMS without lying awake at night. The HVAC Snapshot handles the wiring, the audit log, the keyword routing, and the timezone math — you handle the consent at intake.
Want us to walk you through the setup before you buy? Book a 20-minute compliance review — or grab the snapshot at $997 (regularly $1,697) and we’ll file your brand and campaign as part of onboarding.