In the continuing list of ridiculous lawsuits, the US District Court of Southern California has thrown out a case where the plaintiff wanted to sue Taco Bell for sending him confirmation of his opt-out.  Just another case of a consumer wanting to make money off of a big company for doing what it was supposed to do!

The Taco Bell case confirmed the need for a reply message when a consumer opt-outs of a text message marketing program.

In Ibey vs. Taco Bell Corp, the plaintiff agreed to consent to receive text messages from Taco Bell.  Later, the plaintiff wished to opt-out of the Taco Bell database and texted ”STOP” to do so.  At this point, Taco Bell’s text message marketing system replied with a confirmation message indicating that the plaintiff had indeed opted out.

The plaintiff brought suit, alleging that the confirmation message was in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act on the grounds that it “constituted an unsolicited advertisement placed via an automatic telephone dialing system.”

The Court found that the confirmation message was not in fact “unsolicited telemarketing.”

At 84444.com, we have customers that often consider that they should not send a receipt confirmation message in an interactive text message marketing program.  In fact, it is one of hte features that we offer to those customers that may wish to save money from not responding to incoming texts.

Such a practice, however, is almost always a bad idea.  When a consumer sends an interactive text, if they don’t get a response quickly, what do you think they do?  They send another one!  You need to give them the confirmation that the interactive text worked in the first place.  If not, they will think that they haven’t opted-out of the database and they will be even madder.

Read more here about text message legal cases that were legitimate and that businesses should be aware of.

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