Customer communications and consent

This document forms part of your agreement with us. It sets out the rules that apply when you use Spanstead Works to send messages to your own customers. Read it alongside the Commercial Terms, which cover how messaging usage is billed, the Legal Terms, and the Privacy Notice.

Two clauses of the Legal Terms matter here more than anywhere else in the set. Section 14 is your indemnity to us for messages sent without the consent you claimed, including claims under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the CAN-SPAM Act. Section 13 is the single liability cap that applies across every document between us, this one included. Section 5 below is the plain-English version of the same division.

The English text governs. This document may be shown in Spanish or another language as a courtesy. Where a translation differs from the English, the English controls, as Section 19.1 of the Legal Terms sets out.

1. Who is sending

Every message described here is sent from you to your customer, under your business name and your phone number or sending address. You are the sender of record. You hold the relationship with the recipient, you are responsible for having the consent the law requires, and you are responsible for the content of what is sent.

We provide the sending infrastructure and we decide what that infrastructure permits. Where this document says a category of message is not supported, that is a limit on the product, and it applies regardless of any consent you may hold.

Messaging is available for United States numbers only. The platform rejects any number that is not a valid 10-digit US number.

2. Supported and unsupported channels

Transactional consent and marketing consent are separate permissions, and consent never escalates. A transactional opt-in never becomes marketing permission, on any channel, by any route.

3. How consent works

Consent is deliberately asymmetric. Opting out is global. Opting in is specific to a purpose.

3.1 Opting out is global

When a customer replies STOP to a text message or a WhatsApp message, every category of message to that number stops permanently, until that customer sends an explicit START. There is no partial opt-out that ends promotions while leaving other messages running. A customer who opts out has ended the conversation. A STOP sent on WhatsApp also ends WhatsApp as that customer's channel, so a later START sent by text message does not move them back to WhatsApp.

The platform recognises STOP, STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END and QUIT, together with the opt-out handling provided by our messaging carrier. A message that merely contains the word "stop" in a sentence is not treated as an opt-out.

For email, each customer has a marketing opt-out setting and a permanent unsubscribe link that stays valid across every future message rather than being reissued each time.

3.2 Opting in is specific to a purpose

Transactional consent arises from your business relationship with the customer. A customer who hired you and gave you a phone number for that job has consented to messages about that job: appointment reminders, status and on-the-way notices, invoice and payment notices, and replies from your staff.

Marketing consent must be explicit, documented, and timestamped. It is never implied. It covers promotions, campaigns, and review requests.

A transactional opt-in is never silently upgraded into marketing permission. Consent recorded because a customer confirmed an appointment does not authorise you to send that customer a review request or a promotion.

3.3 Evidence of marketing consent

Where marketing consent is recorded, the platform retains the disclosure text that was shown, the time it was given, and its source. You are responsible for ensuring the consent you record actually occurred.

Consent records that you bulk-import carry no evidence of how they arose. Imported consent may grant transactional permission only. It will never grant marketing permission, regardless of how it is labelled in the file you import.

3.4 Replying to a customer who contacted you

Where a customer sends you a message, a member of your staff may reply by hand within 24 hours of that message even if no consent is recorded for that number. A customer who texts you has invited a reply.

This applies to replies written by a person. It does not permit an automated message. An automated message sent inside the reply window is still an automated message and still requires the consent that its category needs.

On WhatsApp the same 24 hours run from the customer's last WhatsApp message, and WhatsApp itself enforces them: outside that window only a template approved by Meta can be sent, and your full reply waits for the customer in their customer portal.

4. Each channel in detail

4.1 Transactional SMS

Covers job and appointment updates, on-the-way notices, invoice and payment notifications, and replies from your staff in the Messages module. Governed by transactional consent, and blocked outright for any customer who has opted out.

Every message carries your business identity and opt-out instructions. Where we change that disclosure wording, we record which version each customer was shown, so it remains possible to establish what a given customer actually saw.

4.2 Marketing SMS is not supported

We do not send promotional or campaign traffic over SMS. Campaigns are email-only, and no SMS option is offered within them.

This is a product boundary rather than a feature we have not built yet. Penalties under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act are assessed per message with a private right of action and no overall cap, so a single mis-consented campaign can produce liability out of all proportion to the revenue involved. That liability would be yours, but the messages would have left our infrastructure, and carrier filtering of marketing traffic degrades deliverability for every business that shares it.

4.3 Transactional email

Covers invoices, estimates, purchase orders, receipts, appointment confirmations, and account notices.

Transactional email is not blocked by a marketing opt-out, and is not intended to be. A customer who unsubscribes from your marketing has not waived their invoice. We also prevent duplicate sends of the same document.

4.4 Marketing email

Covers the Campaigns module. Governed by each customer's marketing opt-out setting and their permanent unsubscribe link.

Customers who have opted out are excluded both when you preview an audience and again at the moment of sending. Each recipient's address is recorded when the list is built, so a later edit to a customer record cannot redirect a message that is already queued.

When you send marketing email you must include a working one-click unsubscribe in every message and a physical mailing address, and your sender and subject lines must be accurate. Unsubscribe requests take effect immediately.

4.5 Automated review requests

A review request asks a customer for a public endorsement that markets your business to people who are not yet your customers. That it follows a completed job makes it well timed. It does not make it transactional. Review requests are governed by marketing consent, on both SMS and email.

This does not contradict Section 4.2. What is not supported over SMS is promotional campaign traffic: bulk sends, offers, and announcements. A review request is sent to one person, is tied to a specific job that customer bought, carries no offer, and is sent once. It remains available over SMS where that customer has given marketing consent.

The practical effect is that fewer review requests will send than you might expect, because most customers will not have granted marketing consent. That is the intended result. Collecting permission to send review requests is a step you need to take.

If you register a messaging campaign with the carriers, the use case you declare must describe review requests honestly. Do not declare a purely transactional use case and then send review requests under it.

4.6 WhatsApp

WhatsApp is an optional second channel for the same messages. It is available only where you connect your own WhatsApp sender, through your own Twilio account, and only to a customer who chooses it.

A customer must choose WhatsApp themselves, in their customer portal, or tell you so and have a member of your staff record it after the disclosure has been shown or read to them. The choice is recorded with its disclosure text and version, the time, the source and the person who recorded it, in the same way as marketing consent. Choosing WhatsApp never grants a purpose. It moves the messages a customer has already agreed to onto WhatsApp: a customer without marketing consent receives no review request on WhatsApp either. A customer can switch back to text messages at any time.

Meta's rules apply alongside ours. WhatsApp is operated by Meta Platforms, Inc. By connecting a WhatsApp sender you accept Meta's terms for the WhatsApp Business Platform, including the WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy, and you are responsible for your business verification with Meta, for the display name Meta approves, and for complying with those policies. Meta may restrict or disable your sender under its own rules, and we cannot reverse that.

WhatsApp allows a business to send a free-form message only within 24 hours of the customer's last WhatsApp message to it. Outside that window only a message template approved by Meta can be sent. The platform creates and submits those templates in your Twilio account, and a message that has no approved template is not sent.

Meta receives the recipient's number and the content of each WhatsApp message in order to deliver it, and handles them under its own terms. Twilio and Meta bill you directly for WhatsApp messages; we do not.

Marketing and campaign messages are not supported over WhatsApp, for the same reasons as Section 4.2.

5. Your responsibilities

You are responsible for:

1. Holding the consent that the law requires for every message you send, and being able to show it.
2. Honouring opt-outs, including any received outside the platform.
3. The accuracy and content of your messages, including your sender identity and subject lines.
4. Any carrier registration your sending requires, and describing your use case honestly in it.
5. Complying with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the CAN-SPAM Act, and any state law that applies to you.
6. Where you use WhatsApp, complying with Meta's terms and the WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy, and keeping your business verification with Meta current.

We may suspend messaging for your account where we reasonably believe it is being used without the required consent, or in a way that threatens the deliverability of the shared sending infrastructure.

6. Artificial intelligence in customer messaging

AI may rank and time messages. AI never writes them.

Where the platform uses AI in customer messaging, it does two things: it selects which of several predetermined reminders is most worth surfacing to you, and it chooses among a small number of fixed timing slots. A member of your staff approves every outbound text message, and the wording comes from a reviewed template rather than being generated.

Every message your customer receives was written by a person and reviewed once. Nothing a customer receives can contain a commitment invented by a machine, because nothing a customer receives is generated by one.

If you are asked whether our AI messages your customers, the answer is no. It decides which reminder is worth surfacing and when, and a person approves it.

7. Changes

Where we change this document we will publish the updated version and, where the change materially affects your obligations, ask you to accept it before you continue using the messaging features.