TCPA Claims: How to Get Paid $500–$1,500 Per Illegal Robocall or Spam Text (2026)

Almost nobody realizes that a single illegal robocall or spam text is worth money to the person who received it. Under the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), 47 U.S.C. § 227, consumers have a private right of action worth $500 per violating call or text, trebled to $1,500 per violation when the conduct was knowing or willful. That is per message — not per case. Ten unwanted automated texts from the same company can be a $5,000 to $15,000 claim, and courts have entered TCPA judgments running into the hundreds of millions. This guide explains what actually counts as a violation, how to build a record that survives scrutiny, the three routes to getting paid, and the traps that kill otherwise valid claims.

What the TCPA is and why it pays consumers directly

Congress passed the TCPA in 1991 and the FCC enforces and interprets it through rules codified at 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200. What makes the statute unusual is that Congress did not leave enforcement to regulators alone — it wrote a private right of action into the law, letting the person who received the call sue in state or federal court and recover statutory damages without proving any financial loss. You do not need to show that the call cost you money, wasted billable time, or caused emotional distress. Receipt of the violating message is the injury.

The damages math: $500, $1,500, and per-message stacking

• $500 in statutory damages per negligent violation — each call, each voicemail drop, each text message counts separately.
• $1,500 per violation when the violation was willful or knowing — typically shown by calls continuing after you said stop, or by internal do-not-call failures.
• Damages stack across statutes: one call can violate the autodialer/prerecorded-voice rules and the Do Not Call registry rules, and many states add their own mini-TCPA damages on top.
• Injunctive relief is available — a court can order the caller to stop contacting you entirely.
• No cap on total recovery for an individual, and no requirement to prove actual monetary loss.

A practical example: a debt buyer places 22 prerecorded calls to your cell phone over five weeks, and you told them twice to stop. At $500 each that is $11,000 in baseline exposure; if the post-revocation calls are found willful, those calls are worth $1,500 each and the number climbs fast. That asymmetry is why most TCPA claims settle before trial.

What actually counts as a TCPA violation

1. 01Autodialed or prerecorded calls to a cell phone without your prior express consent — including "ringless voicemail" drops, which the FCC has confirmed are covered calls.
2. 02Marketing calls or texts without prior express written consent — advertising and telemarketing require a signed, standalone written agreement, not a buried checkbox.
3. 03Text messages — courts treat SMS and MMS as "calls" under the statute, so spam texts carry the same $500/$1,500 damages.
4. 04Calls to a number on the National Do Not Call Registry after it has been registered 31 days, when you have no established business relationship.
5. 05Calls that continue after revocation — you can revoke consent by any reasonable means, including replying STOP or telling a live agent to stop.
6. 06Prerecorded telemarketing to a residential landline without written consent.
7. 07Calls outside 8 a.m.–9 p.m. local time, or calls that fail to identify the caller and provide a callback number.
8. 08Failure to honor an internal do-not-call request within a reasonable time (the FCC's benchmark is 10 business days).
9. 09Unsolicited fax advertisements — still actionable at $500 per fax.

Two mechanics matter more than anything else in modern cases. First, after the Supreme Court's 2021 decision in Facebook v. Duguid, the definition of "automatic telephone dialing system" narrowed to equipment using a random or sequential number generator — so many claims now rest on the prerecorded/artificial-voice prong or the Do Not Call rules instead. Second, the FCC's 2024–2025 consent revocation rules require callers to honor any reasonable revocation request within 10 business days and bar them from applying one company's consent to affiliates or lead-generation partners.

What is exempt — and what will get your claim dismissed

• Calls you consented to: giving your number on an application, loan, or order form is prior express consent for related non-marketing calls.
• Purely informational calls in some contexts — appointment reminders, delivery notices, fraud alerts, and school or utility notifications carry broad exemptions.
• Political calls, most charitable solicitations to landlines, and calls from tax-exempt nonprofits (though prerecorded political calls to cell phones still need consent).
• Debt collection calls placed manually by a live agent with no prerecorded voice.
• Calls to a business landline rather than a personal cell or residential line.
• Someone else's number reassigned to you — callers get a safe harbor if they checked the FCC's Reassigned Numbers Database and got a "no" result.

Step 1: Build the evidence file before you contact anyone

1. 01Screenshot every text with the full sender number, date, and time visible; export the thread if your phone supports it.
2. 02Log every call in a simple spreadsheet: date, exact time, incoming number, whether it rang or dropped to voicemail, whether the voice was live or prerecorded, and what was said.
3. 03Save voicemails — a prerecorded voicemail is the single strongest piece of TCPA evidence. Back up the audio file off your phone.
4. 04Download your carrier's call detail records for the relevant months; carrier logs corroborate your spreadsheet and are hard to dispute.
5. 05Record the revocation moment: note the date and time you said stop, who you told, and the exact wording, or screenshot your STOP reply and their confirmation.
6. 06Identify the actual caller. Ask for the company name, address, and the client they are calling for; sellers are vicariously liable for calls their vendors make.
7. 07Confirm your number's Do Not Call registration date at the official registry so you can show the 31-day period had run.

Register or verify your number for free at DoNotCall.gov, and file the complaint with the FTC and FCC as you go — the complaint creates a timestamped official record of the calls even though the agencies do not pay you.

Step 2: Pick one of the three routes to getting paid

There is no government office that mails you a TCPA check. Payment comes from the caller, and there are exactly three practical routes.

1. 01Join an existing class action settlement. Someone has already sued the company and a court-approved fund is paying claims. This is the easiest route by far — you file a short claim form, usually with just your phone number, and receive a check. Payouts are typically $20–$500 because the fund is split across a huge class, but the effort is minutes.
2. 02Send a demand letter and settle directly. You (or a consumer attorney) send the company a documented demand citing 47 U.S.C. § 227 with your call log attached. Companies with real exposure frequently settle in the low four figures per claimant to avoid litigation costs and discovery. This is the highest dollar-per-hour route for a small number of well-documented calls.
3. 03File suit. Small claims court works for individual claims under your state's limit (often $5,000–$10,000) with no lawyer required, and TCPA claims can be brought in state court. For larger or multi-violation claims, consumer attorneys take TCPA cases on contingency because the statute is fee-shifting in practice through settlement, so you generally pay nothing up front.

For route one, monitor the FTC's refunds page and the CFPB's payment page — both list live consumer distributions, including robocall and telemarketing enforcement money — and learn how claim forms work before you file so yours is not rejected.

Most large TCPA settlements require no receipt and no proof of harm — your phone number appearing in the defendant's call records is the proof, and many allow simple self-attestation. That's the same category of claim as other no-proof-of-purchase settlements.

Step 3: How to write a TCPA demand letter that gets a response

• Identify yourself, your cell number, and state that the number is registered on the National Do Not Call Registry, with the registration date.
• Attach the call log: every date, time, and incoming number, and flag which calls used a prerecorded or artificial voice.
• Cite the statute and rule: 47 U.S.C. § 227(b) and (c), and 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200, and state that you never gave prior express written consent.
• State the revocation date and quote what you said, then list every call that came after it as willful.
• Calculate the demand: number of negligent violations × $500 plus willful violations × $1,500, and show the arithmetic.
• Demand written confirmation that your number has been added to their internal do-not-call list and scrubbed from all affiliate lists.
• Give a deadline — 14 to 30 days — and send it to the registered agent by certified mail as well as by email.

Timing rules that decide whether you collect

• Statute of limitations: four years from the date of each call under the federal catch-all limitations period, so older calls drop off the claim one by one.
• Do Not Call claims require your number to have been registered at least 31 days before the call.
• Revocation must be honored within 10 business days under current FCC rules — calls after that window are the strongest willfulness evidence.
• Class action settlement claim deadlines are hard and short, usually 60–180 days after notice; a missed deadline is unrecoverable.
• Once a class settlement is approved and you do not opt out, you release your individual claim — so decide early whether your documented log is worth more than the class payout.

State mini-TCPA laws that stack on top

A growing number of states have their own telemarketing statutes with independent damages, and they often reach conduct the federal statute misses — Florida's Telephone Solicitation Act, Oklahoma's Telephone Solicitation Act, and Washington's Commercial Electronic Mail Act among them, alongside longstanding statutes in California, Texas, and New York. Many require consent for automated calls regardless of the equipment used, which sidesteps the Duguid autodialer problem entirely. Check your state attorney general's consumer protection page and, if the caller is a licensed telemarketer, your state's registration database.

Mistakes that destroy valid TCPA claims

• Answering and engaging with the caller to "generate" more violations — courts view manufactured claims poorly, and professional-plaintiff arguments are a real defense.
• Deleting texts or voicemails after screenshotting them; keep the originals on the device.
• Giving your number back to the company through a web form, sweepstakes, or lead-gen quiz, which can create fresh consent.
• Waiting past four years, or past the class settlement claim deadline.
• Signing a broad release for $50 when your documented log supports a four-figure demand.
• Paying an upfront "case review" fee — legitimate consumer attorneys work TCPA claims on contingency and never charge to evaluate a call log.

How TCPA money fits into everything else you may be owed

TCPA claims are one slice of a much bigger pool of consumer money that goes uncollected: settlement funds, regulatory refunds, state-held unclaimed property, and refundable tax credits. If a company was robocalling you, there is a reasonable chance it also owes you a refund or holds a dormant balance in your name — and states hold over $70 billion in unclaimed property overall. Start with your state's unclaimed money guide, then work through the settlement and refund lists.

Hidden Payouts does the monitoring part for you: one profile, cross-referenced against open settlements, state registries, and federal refund sources, with a filing link for each match. You always claim directly with the official issuer and keep 100% of the payout.