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Auto dialers are a useful tool for businesses that want to stay in contact with customers and potential clients. But with great power comes great responsibility, which is why the San Diego branch of fitness club, Crunch, is glad that its calling platform has not been deemed an auto dialer by the California courts.

The United States District Court for the Southern District of California dismissed a putative class action filed against Crunch San Diego recently, under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The plaintiff alleged that the fitness club sent unwanted promotional messages in violation of the TCPA, but the court ruled that Crunch did not use an auto dialer to send text messages to the named plaintiff and therefore was not subject to TCPA regulations.

The TCPA is intended to curb potential abuses from telemarketers and technologies such as auto dialers, since it is generally accepted that calls late at night or incessant automated marketing messages are more harmful to society than helpful.

Crunch argued that it did not use an auto dialer, and instead relied upon a third-party, Web-based platform for sending messages that required telephone numbers to be manually inputted into the system.

Because the platform used by Crunch “lacks the capacity to store or produce telephone numbers . . . using a random or sequential number generator,” it cannot by definition be an auto dialer under the TCPA, argued the company.

In deciding the case, the court looked at commentary published by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC (News - Alert)) that broadly interpreted the definition of an auto dialer and focused on the equipment’s capacity to generate numbers and dial them without human intervention.

The court decided that the FCC analysis is not binding on courts, as the FCC does not have the statutory authority to change the TCPA’s definition of an auto dialer. This was contrary to the rulemaking authority granted to the FCC under different provisions of the TCPA.

Further, the court looked at the interpretations of other courts when it comes to “capacity” under the TCPA, interpretations which have determined that it is the systems’ present capacity to store, produce or call randomly or sequentially generated phone numbers that determines if it falls under the TCPA regulations. If a system’s potential to auto-dial was the determining factor, devices such as cell phones would also fall under TCPA regulation.

Because the Crunch system currently required employees to manually dial the number, it was deemed that the system did not fall under the TCPA regulations.