While the FDCPA regulates what collectors say, a separate federal statute prices how they dial — and the price per violation is high enough to have created its own field of litigation. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. §227, restricts calls and texts made with autodialers or prerecorded/artificial voices to cell phones without the recipient’s prior express consent — and it awards $500 per violating call, trebled to $1,500 for willful or knowing violations, through a private right of action with no cap on aggregate recovery.
How this intersects with debt collection. Collectors are volume dialers. Consent to be called typically originates in the underlying credit agreement — which means it can be revoked: the Supreme Court and FCC framework recognize consumers’ right to withdraw consent by any reasonable means, and the CFPB’s Regulation F adds its own limits, including the presumption against more than seven calls within seven days per debt (12 C.F.R. Part 1006). A written revocation — “I revoke consent to be called on my cell phone; communicate in writing only” — converts each subsequent robodial into a countable violation. Wrong-number cases are cleaner still: the collector calling a recycled number robocalling a stranger never had consent at all.
The log is the lawsuit. TCPA damages are per call, so the case is arithmetic: date, time, number, whether a prerecorded voice or the telltale autodialer pause preceded a live agent, and screenshots of the call log. Thirty documented calls after revocation is a $15,000–$45,000 statutory claim — numbers that explain why consumer attorneys handle these on contingency and why collectors settle them with the underlying debt thrown in.
Texts count. Each unconsented autodialed text is a separate violation at the same rates.
The stack: TCPA claims plead alongside FDCPA (15 U.S.C. §1692d — harassment by repeated calls) and Rosenthal Act claims (Civil Code §1788.11 — prohibiting calls with harassing frequency), three penalty streams from one call log.
Revoke in writing, then count. The phone that harassed you becomes the meter that bills them.
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