Yes, you can sue a company for repeatedly calling you. The federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) lets you collect $500 per illegal call, and up to $1,500 per call if the company knew what it was doing. Whether your case actually works comes down to three things: what kind of calls you got, whether you ever gave consent (and whether you took it back), and how carefully you documented everything.
When the Calls Are Actually Illegal
Not every annoying call is a lawsuit. The TCPA restricts two main categories, each with its own rules and its own private right to sue.
The first is robocalls to your cell phone. No one can use an autodialer or a prerecorded message to call your cell without your prior express consent. If the call is a sales pitch, that consent has to be in writing. For non-marketing automated calls like appointment reminders, verbal consent is enough.
The second is telemarketing calls to numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry. You can add your number for free at donotcall.gov or by calling 1-888-382-1222. After 31 days on the registry, non-exempt telemarketers have to stop calling. To sue over registry violations, you need more than one violating call from the same company within a 12-month period. A single unwanted telemarketing call does not open the door.
Every telemarketing company also has to keep its own internal do-not-call list. Even if you skipped the national registry, you can tell any individual company to stop, and it must add you to that list. A company that keeps calling after that request can face penalties of up to $53,088 per violation under the Telemarketing Sales Rule.
Telemarketers are also barred from calling before 8:00 a.m. or after 9:00 p.m. in your local time zone, whether or not you’re on the registry.
One important wrinkle on autodialers: in 2021, the Supreme Court held in Facebook v. Duguid that a system qualifies as an autodialer under the TCPA only if it uses a random or sequential number generator. Equipment that just dials from a pre-loaded customer list does not count. If your repeat calls come from a live person or from a system working through a targeted contact list, your stronger claim is likely a Do Not Call violation or a state-law claim rather than an autodialer claim.
Calls That Won’t Support a Lawsuit
Several categories of callers are partly or fully exempt from the TCPA, and this is where many cases collapse before they start.
- Political campaigns and organizations are not treated as telephone solicitations and can call registry numbers.
- Tax-exempt charitable organizations don’t face the same consent requirements as commercial telemarketers.
- Telephone surveys and polls that don’t include a sales pitch are generally exempt from Do Not Call restrictions.
- Emergency calls affecting public health and safety are exempt from consent requirements entirely.
- A company you recently did business with can make live telemarketing calls for up to 18 months after your last transaction, or up to three months after you inquired about its products. This covers live human calls only, not robocalls or prerecorded messages, and it ends the moment you ask the company to stop.
- Debt collectors can call whether or not you’re on the registry, though autodialed or prerecorded calls to your cell still require prior consent.
How to Revoke Consent
If you ever gave a company permission to call, revoking it is often the step that turns future calls into lawsuits.
FCC rules say you can revoke consent through any reasonable method. The company cannot lock you into one specific channel. Certain methods are automatically reasonable: replying “stop,” “quit,” “end,” “revoke,” “opt out,” “cancel,” or “unsubscribe” to a text; pressing the opt-out key during an interactive voice call; or using a phone number or website the company designated for opt-outs. Voicemails and emails to the company create a strong presumption that consent has been revoked.
After you revoke, the company has 10 business days to stop. Any call or text after that window is a potential violation you can sue over.
Building the Evidence You’ll Need
TCPA cases live or die on documentation. Start the moment you realize a company is calling you repeatedly.
Your call log is the core exhibit. Save screenshots of the date, time, and number for every unwanted call. Better still, pull your full call records from your phone carrier. Those carry more weight than screenshots because they’re harder to fabricate. For each call, note whether it was a live person or a recording, which company it was, and what it was about.
Document every revocation. If you said “stop” during a live call, write down the date, time, and who you spoke with. If you texted “stop,” screenshot the exchange. If you sent a letter, keep a copy and the certified mail receipt. The gap between your revocation and the next call is what turns an annoyance into a viable claim.
If you cannot identify who is calling, suing becomes hard. You need a defendant to name. Your carrier’s spam-verification labels can help support the case, but a spoofed, untraceable number leaves you without a target.
A written cease and desist letter isn’t required, but it helps twice. Some companies stop when they get one. And if calls continue after the company has received it, that continued contact is strong evidence of willful or knowing violations, which is what unlocks tripled damages. Keep it simple: your name, your number, a clear revocation of any prior consent, a demand to stop all calls and texts, and a warning that you’ll pursue legal remedies. Send it certified mail with return receipt.
Where to File
The TCPA lets you sue in state court, and the Supreme Court has confirmed federal and state courts share jurisdiction. You have options, but for individual cases they aren’t equal.
Small claims court is the practical choice for most people. Filing fees are modest, no lawyer is required, and the procedures are simplified. Twenty illegal calls at $500 apiece is $10,000, which fits within most small claims limits before any tripling. You file a short complaint describing the violations, serve the company, and bring your evidence to a hearing.
Federal court is available but rarely worth it for an individual. Formal civil procedure applies, discovery can drag on, and the TCPA is not a fee-shifting statute. Even if you win, the company doesn’t have to pay your attorney fees; your lawyer takes them from your recovery. That math works for class actions with thousands of violations. For a dozen unwanted calls, federal-court costs can swallow the whole award.
What You Can Recover
The TCPA has two damage frameworks, and which one applies depends on the provision you sue under.
Autodialer and Prerecorded Call Violations
Under Section 227(b), you can recover your actual monetary losses or $500 per violation, whichever is greater. The $500 is a floor. You don’t need to prove any financial harm. If the court finds the violations were willful or knowing, it can triple the award to up to $1,500 per call.
Do Not Call Violations
Under Section 227(c), you can recover actual losses or “up to” $500 per violation. That “up to” language lets a court award less than $500 per call, unlike the autodialer provision. Treble damages of up to $1,500 per call are still available for willful violations. Companies also have an affirmative defense here: if they can show reasonable procedures were in place to prevent registry violations, they may avoid liability entirely.
Injunctive Relief
The court can also order the company to stop calling you. An injunction is available under both provisions, alongside or instead of money. Violating a court order carries consequences that escalate well beyond the underlying TCPA penalties.
For scale: 30 autodialed calls after a clear revocation, if found willful, reaches $45,000. Even 10 calls at the base $500 rate puts $5,000 on the table, which is worth a small claims filing.
How Long You Have to Sue
The TCPA doesn’t set its own statute of limitations. Most federal courts apply a four-year window, though some apply the limitations period of the state where you file, which can be shorter. Don’t assume you have unlimited time. Filing sooner protects your claim and keeps the oldest violations from expiring.
State Laws That Can Help
Many states have their own telemarketing and robocall laws that go beyond the TCPA. Some impose higher per-call damages, stricter consent rules, or broader autodialer definitions. That matters especially where the narrowed federal autodialer definition after Facebook v. Duguid weakens a TCPA claim. An attorney familiar with your state’s consumer protection statutes can tell you whether a state-law claim adds to what you can recover or offers a path the federal statute closes off.