Two of Every Three Homeowner Numbers Are on a Do Not Call List. Here's What a Roofer Can Still Dial After a Storm.
The federal registry, the Texas No-Call List and the Colorado no-call list each have their own rules, fees and fines. What they cover, what they exempt, what a bad call costs in each state, and how to run a storm call sheet that stays legal.
Pull the phone numbers for every home under a hail swath and most of them are off limits before you dial. Across roughly 770,000 Colorado and Texas homeowner numbers we've looked up, about two in three carry a Do Not Call flag.
That is not a reason to stop calling. It is a reason to know exactly which third you can call, and what the other two thirds cost you if you get it wrong. A roofer working Colorado Springs or Fort Worth answers to three separate lists, and they don't agree with each other.
List one: the National Do Not Call Registry
The federal registry is run by the FTC and enforced by the FTC, the FCC and state attorneys general. The rules that matter for a roofer:
- Scrub every 31 days. A number you checked in May is not a checked number in July. The Telemarketing Sales Rule requires the list you dial from to be no more than 31 days old.
- Registrations never expire, and cell phones count. Most numbers that come back on a homeowner lookup are cells, and they stay on the list until the owner removes them.
- Access is free for five area codes. For the fiscal year that started October 1, 2026, each additional area code is $85 a year. Denver, Colorado Springs and Fort Collins fit in the free five. DFW alone uses six.
The exemptions that matter:
| Exemption | How long it lasts |
|---|---|
| Established business relationship after a purchase | 18 months from the last transaction |
| Inquiry or application, no purchase | 3 months from the inquiry |
| Written permission to call | Until withdrawn |
A homeowner who filled out your website form in June can be called until September. A customer you re-roofed in 2024 can be called until 2026. A stranger under the swath with no history can be called only if their number is clear.
The penalty is the part roofers don't believe. The FTC's civil penalty is up to $53,088 per violation. The FTC doesn't chase a two-truck roofer, but the TCPA's private right of action does: a homeowner who gets more than one call in 12 months while on the registry can sue for $500 a call, tripled to $1,500 if the court finds you knew.
List two: the Texas No-Call List
Texas keeps its own list under Business and Commerce Code Chapter 304, and it doesn't share with the federal registry. Scrubbing one does not scrub the other.
- Buy the list. The Public Utility Commission's rule caps it at $75 per list per quarter, so budget $300 a year to stay current on the statewide list.
- 60-day grace. You may not call a number more than 60 days after it appears on the current list. Inside that window a newly registered number is still callable.
- Established business relationship exemption, no clock. A voluntary two-way communication about a good or service you offer, lasting until either side ends it. A terminated relationship stays callable until the number appears on a published list or one year after the breakup, whichever is later.
- Fines go to the Attorney General. Up to $1,000 per violation, and up to $3,000 if the court finds you did it knowingly. Chapter 304 violations also feed the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which is the private lawsuit route.
Then there is Chapter 302. Texas requires anyone making telephone solicitations to register with the Secretary of State, pay a $200 fee and post a $10,000 security bond. The exemptions in Section 302.053 cover securities dealers, banks, insurers, utilities and public companies. Roofers aren't on the list. The only general escape hatch, Section 302.061, is for a solicitation that is "an isolated transaction" and "not done in the course of a pattern of repeated transactions of a similar nature." A storm call sheet is the definition of a pattern.
Senate Bill 140, effective September 1, 2025, extended all of that to text messages. We covered that side in the 2026 cold-text rules for Texas and Colorado.
List three: the Colorado no-call list
Colorado's list lives in C.R.S. 6-1-901 through 6-1-908 and is run through a designated agent for the Public Utilities Commission.
- Register and pay by company size. The 2026 schedule stayed put: free for companies with fewer than five employees, then a sliding scale from $375 up to the $500 statutory cap. Most storm roofers pay nothing or sit in the first paid tier.
- Refresh quarterly. Update your copy of the list within 30 days after each calendar quarter begins.
- Established business relationship: 18 months. Same window as the federal rule, formed by a purchase, application, contract or transaction and not ended by either side.
- Inquiry window: 30 days. Not the federal three months. Colorado gives you 30 days after a homeowner contacts you about a purchase, or until they say stop.
- Texts are calls. Colorado's definition of telephone solicitation has included text messages for years.
A violation is a deceptive trade practice under the Colorado Consumer Protection Act. The state won't bring an action for fewer than three violations in a month, but a homeowner's own lawyer has no such floor.
Colorado also gives you a real defense. If you fully complied with the no-call rules and had written practices and procedures in place before the call, a slip is not a violation. Write the procedure down. One page is enough. The roofer with a documented scrub schedule and the roofer with "we usually check" face the same bad call and very different outcomes.
The math on one storm
Take a 1.5-inch radar-estimated hail cell over an Arvada neighborhood with 1,200 homes. You pull contact records and get numbers for about 900 of them. Two in three are flagged, so you have roughly 300 callable numbers and 600 that go door-only.
Say you skip the scrub, dial all 900, and call the no-answers again a week later, which is the second call the TCPA needs. If one in ten flagged homeowners complains and one in five of those complaints turns into a TCPA demand letter at the $500 floor, that is 12 letters and $6,000 before any lawyer's time. In Texas, the same 600 bad calls are 600 potential Chapter 304 violations at up to $1,000 each if the Attorney General ever looks.
Now say you scrub properly. You call 300 homes, you door-knock 600, and the 600 are not wasted. A home on the Do Not Call list is still a home with a young roof under big hail. The flag only tells you how to reach it. Our door-knocking cost math still applies to those doors, and a scored route through 600 homes beats a scored route through 1,200 unscored ones.
How to run a storm call sheet that stays legal
- Get a federal Subscription Account Number. Register at the FTC telemarketer site, pick your area codes, and keep the SAN on file. It is the proof you were allowed to download the list.
- Add the state list. Buy the Texas list, or register in Colorado. Federal clearance alone is not enough in either state.
- Scrub on a 31-day clock. Set the reminder for day 25, not day 31, so the sheet you hand a crew on Monday is still clean on Friday.
- Write the one-page procedure. Who scrubs, when, against which lists, where the records live. This is the Colorado defense and it is cheap.
- Separate the two piles before the crew sees them. Callable numbers on one sheet, Do Not Call homes on a door route. Never hand a crew a number marked "probably fine."
- Honor your own list forever. Anyone who says "take me off" goes on your internal list, and that list never expires under any of the three regimes.
None of this is legal advice. The figures above are current as of this post. Read the statutes before a big campaign.
How we handle it
Every number on a RoofLeads Pro call sheet comes back from the contact lookup with its Do Not Call flag attached. Before a number goes on a morning PDF, any flag older than 25 days is re-checked, so the crew has about a week left inside the 31-day federal rule. A number that can't be confirmed that morning stays off the call sheet and the home goes to the door route. Each address reads "may call" or "Do Not Call, door only." We screen against the federal registry. The Texas and Colorado state lists are on you, and so is your own registration.
Run the cost of a scrubbed campaign through the cost-per-job calculator before you decide how many doors a crew should knock versus dial. When you want the homes already sorted into callable and door-only, with roof age and radar-estimated stone size at every address, our territories do that for one roofer per city at a flat price on the pricing page. If your city is still open, check the territory map. First come.
One roofer per city. Real leads from real storms.
Exclusive Colorado territories with NOAA-verified storm scoring and TCPA-compliant outreach data.
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