The mobile carriers (T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T) have codes of conduct for mass marketing for text messaging campaigns to ensure that their networks aren't being used for illegal or unethical activities. You can find these codes of conduct here. Note that these codes of conduct only apply to A2P (application-to-person) messaging, not P2P (person-to-person) messaging.

These codes of conduct have been around for years, and contain rules you might expect: no phishing, no scamming, etc. They also tend to make reference to the acronym SHAFT, which stands for "sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, tobacco." These are topics that the carriers want to make sure are being handled appropriately. They don't want to carry messaging that promotes illegal or unethical activity related to those topics. For example, they don't want businesses to invite minors to order alcoholic beverages.

If your business uses ResNexus Text Messaging to send out a mass marketing text that violates the carrier's code of conduct, your business may incur a fine or suspension of service from the carrier. Similar to the majority of text messaging providers, ResNexus passes any fines incurred from the carrier down to those violating businesses.

Every mobile carrier is different, and has different policies in regards to fines and prohibited content. As an example, T-Mobile recently communicated to third-party providers (such as ResNexus) a new structure of non-compliance fines for messages including prohibited content, laid out as follows:

• Phishing or social engineering (attempts to manipulate someone into sharing private information such as passwords and credit card numbers) is a Tier I offense, and can result in a $2,000 fine per instance.

• Other illegal content (content that is not legal in all 50 United States), is a Tier II offense at a $1,000 fine per instance.

• Tier III is a $500 fine per instance, and pertains to other types of violations, including (but not limited to) SHAFT violations in regards to federal and state laws and regulations.

Of the three tiers, Tier III violations are the most likely to come up for businesses. For example, a property that wants to advertise a wine tasting to their guests might inadvertently message someone under the age of 21 in the United States, thus violating that part of the code of conduct.

For example, the T-Mobile code of conduct states the following under section 5.7:
"All content must adhere to all applicable laws and support a functioning age gate when associated with but not limited to Sex, Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco, and/or any other age-restricted content that must comply with legal regulations. Non-acceptable age gating function includes but is not limited to Yes or No responses. The age-gate mechanism should include the date of birth verification during the consent opt-in of the consumer."

As a result, we at ResNexus would like to reaffirm the importance of verifying the age of your text recipients before sending out promotions that might be age-sensitive. The ResNexus system does collect the birth dates for guests, which is recorded in the back office. The guest can provide this information on the booking engine, or you can ask them in-person when they arrive to verify their age.

This new non-compliance fine structure defines the major offenses to avoid, but doesn't cover the topic of spam. One thing we've discovered at ResNexus is that, in general, the mobile carriers tend to take notice when there's a sudden wave of many incoming "STOP" messages to opt out of text campaigns. This can be a signal to the carrier that the business is spamming unwanted texts to many people at once.

When this occurs, the carrier may impose a fine or suspend the account for a time. Each carrier may handle such situations differently. However, we recommend that our clients exercise caution when sending out mass texts, especially to customers with whom you haven't interacted recently. As a general rule, sending out texts to current or recent guests is a safer course of action.

Feel free to research the mobile carriers' codes of conduct for more detailed information.

ResNexus' Text Messaging terms and conditions have been updated to include additional clarification of the Text Message Carriers' right to change the customer's access due to violations of their codes of conduct and to better explain possible non-compliance behavior that may result in fines being passed down from the mobile carriers.

To view your terms and conditions for text messaging, log in to your ResNexus account, go to Settings, and select Terms of Use. Then scroll down to ResNexus Text Messaging Agreement.