The Federal Communications Commission should not adopt its proposal to require callers to honor opt out requests within 24 hours, CUNA and ACA International wrote to the FCC in comments filed jointly this week.

The FCC’s 2015 Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) Order clarified that consumers may revoke consent using any reasonable means and barred callers from designating the exclusive means of consent. The current notice proposes to codify this requirement and further broaden the ability and speed of consent revocations.

“ACA and CUNA support Commission efforts to prevent businesses from attempting to impose unreasonable revocation procedures as a way to hinder consumer preferences,” the letter reads. "Unfortunately, the Commission’s proposals, particularly its requirement that companies honor revocation requests within 24 hours for any and all future robocalls or robotexts, would create an unreasonable and impracticable standard that would result in unintended consumer harm and expose good faith actors to renewed flood of TCPA litigation.”

The letter notes the FCC’s proposal “seems to be creating a new regulation rather than codifying an existing ruling,” and expressed concerns with the proposed requirement that callers must to honor revocation requests within 24 hours of receipt

“This is a dramatic departure from existing practice that, coupled with banning use of exclusive procedures and deeming the revocation to apply to all future robocalls and robotexts, creates an impracticable standard,” the letter reads. The letter also urges the FCC to adopt an 18-month implementation period for any finalized rule, to allow third-parties sufficient time to come into compliance.