Ringless voicemail

Your phone never rang. There's no missed call. But there's a new voicemail, and it's a recording. Maybe it's asking for someone you've never heard of. That's a ringless voicemail, and under federal law it counts as a call.

What a ringless voicemail is

Ringless voicemail lets a company drop a recorded message straight into your voicemail box without ringing your phone. You never get the chance to pick up, say "wrong number," or hang up. The message is just there when you check your voicemail, often with a callback number and a request to "press one" or "call us back about your account."

Companies like it because it's cheap and it skips the conversation. Debt collectors, lenders, marketers, political campaigns and reminder services all use it, and many of them send it to lists of numbers that changed hands long ago.

What the law says

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act restricts calls to cell phones made with an artificial or prerecorded voice. In November 2022 the Federal Communications Commission ruled that a ringless voicemail is a call under the Act. The company can't avoid the rules just because your phone didn't ring.

That means a ringless voicemail with a recorded message is held to the same rules as any other robocall. The company generally needs your consent before sending it to your cell phone, and for telemarketing it needs your written consent. The law provides statutory damages of $500 for each voicemail that breaks the rules, and a court can triple that to $1,500 if the company did it willfully or knowingly. Whether a particular voicemail qualifies depends on the facts, and a lawyer has to look at yours.

Ringless voicemail for someone else

This is the case we see most. The voicemail is for "Jennifer" or "Mr. Lopez," the person who had your number before you. The company has that person's file and keeps dropping messages, and because your phone never rings, you never get to tell them they have the wrong number. Consent from their customer is not consent from you. More on calls meant for someone else

How to tell it was ringless

• A voicemail shows up with no missed call or ring before it.
• Your call log shows nothing at the time the voicemail arrived, or shows a call that lasted zero seconds.
• The message is a recording or a robot voice, and it sounds the same every time.
• Several voicemails arrive from the same company, often at the same time of day.

What to save

• Every voicemail. Save or export them as audio files, because many phones delete old voicemail automatically.
• A screenshot of your voicemail list showing the date and time of each one.
• A screenshot of your call log for the same days, which shows your phone never rang.
• The name the message asked for and the company and callback number it gave.

Please don't call back or press any buttons to "verify" anything. The full checklist of what to save