Are Collection Texts Telephone Solicitations? A Maryland Court Says No

Nickson v. TrueAccord: What the Maryland Court Decided

On October 5, a federal judge in the District of Maryland closed out both claims in Nickson v. TrueAccord, a lawsuit accusing a debt collector of violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by texting a borrower about an unpaid Affirm balance. The plaintiff, representing himself, made two arguments: that the texts came from an autodialer he never agreed to, and that his number sat on the National Do Not Call Registry. The court granted summary judgment on the first and dismissed the second. On paper, it is a narrow ruling about a consumer installment loan. Read closely, it answers a question that quietly stalls a surprising amount of commercial receivables work, which is whether anyone is even allowed to text the person who owes the money.

Do Not Call Rules Do Not Apply to Collection Texts

The Do Not Call holding is the simpler of the two, and possibly the more useful. Registry rules only reach "telephone solicitations," which the statute defines as messages meant to encourage someone to buy, rent, or invest in property, goods, or services. A collection message does the reverse. It asks the recipient to pay for something already delivered. Because the plaintiff's own complaint described every message as a collection attempt, the claim failed before any evidence entered the picture. The defense lawyers who track these cases put it plainly: collecting a debt is not marketing.

How Vendor Documentation Defeated the Autodialer Claim

The autodialer holding is where the real lesson sits. Since the Supreme Court decided Facebook v. Duguid in 2021, equipment qualifies as an automatic telephone dialing system only if it can store or produce phone numbers using a random or sequential number generator. TrueAccord did not win that point with argument. It won with paperwork: a statement of technical specifications from its texting vendor, SBT, confirming the platform does not create or independently store numbers and cannot send messages through random or sequential generation, backed by a sworn declaration from the vendor's chief technology officer. Against that record, the plaintiff had only a conclusory allegation. His motion to compel more discovery was denied, and the court never reached his arguments about revoking consent, because without an autodialer, consent did not decide anything.

Does the TCPA Apply to Business Debt Collection?

So why should a controller at a distributor or a staffing firm care about a case involving consumer installment debt? Because the autodialer provision of the TCPA does not sort debts into commercial and personal. It looks at the phone that received the message and the equipment that sent it. In a great deal of small and mid-sized business, accounts payable runs through an owner's mobile number. The person who approves your invoice at a twelve-truck logistics outfit or a regional fire protection contractor reads texts on the same phone they use for everything else. That makes text one of the fastest channels to an actual decision-maker in commercial collections, and also the channel that legal caution most often sidelines. The FDCPA does not govern business-to-business accounts, but the TCPA can reach a call or text to a cell phone regardless of what the debt was for, and that ambiguity is exactly why credit teams hesitate.

That hesitation is where receivables leakage starts. A debtor learns from every deadline a creditor does not enforce, and a credit department that pauses outreach for three weeks while someone asks counsel whether a text is permissible is teaching the customer that the balance can wait. Meanwhile, the account slides from the 60-day column into the 90-day column, DSO creeps upward, and the aging report keeps presenting the problem in neat buckets that make it look managed. Nickson does not make texting risk-free. What it shows is that the risk gets managed with documentation rather than avoided through silence, which is the same lesson that runs through most recovery work. Outcomes depend on timing, documentation, and process far more than on how hard anyone pushes.

Robertson v. TrueAccord and the Limits of Nickson

The case also fits a pattern. TrueAccord points to an earlier decision, Robertson v. TrueAccord, in which another court reached the same no-autodialer conclusion by a different route, reasoning that messages containing a specific balance owed could not plausibly have come from a system that dials random numbers. Where Robertson looked at what the messages said, Nickson looked at what the platform could do. Together they give collectors two independent ways to defend digital outreach, provided someone kept the records.

The limits deserve equal attention. Nickson is a single district court opinion, not an appellate ruling, and the plaintiff had no lawyer. Commentators were also careful to note that none of this protects a collector who uses an artificial or prerecorded voice, which the statute reaches whether or not an autodialer is involved. The practical advice that came out of the defense bar was blunt: if you text through a third-party platform, know who at the vendor can sign the technical declaration before a lawsuit forces the question.

What to Ask a Collection Agency About Texting

For a business weighing whether to place a past-due account, this changes the questions worth asking a collection partner. Recovery rates and fee structures matter, but so does how the agency reaches debtors, what technology it uses, and whether it can document how that technology works on demand. An agency that cannot answer those questions hands its compliance exposure back to you. At JSD Management, the view after nearly three decades of commercial placements is that the best recoveries happen early, before an account turns adversarial, and through whichever channel the debtor actually answers.

If a customer has stopped responding to email and calls, that silence is itself a signal, and it usually means the account has drifted further than the aging report suggests. JSD's free Vital Warning Signs assessment scores an account on exactly those behavior patterns, and it takes less time than the meeting where your team debates whether a text message is allowed.

Sources

• COLLECTING IS NOT SOLICITING: TrueAccord Wins Both TCPA Counts Over Debt Collection Texts (TCPAWorld) — https://tcpaworld.com/2026/10/07/collecting-is-not-soliciting-trueaccord-wins-both-tcpa-counts-over-debt-collection-texts/
• NOT MARKETING: Court Reminds TCPAWorld that Debt Collection Just Doesn't Trigger the DNC Rules (National Law Review) — https://natlawreview.com/article/not-marketing-court-reminds-tcpaworld-debt-collection-just-doesnt-trigger-dnc-rules
• Nickson v. TrueAccord Corp., No. 25-3686 (D. Md. Oct. 5, 2026) (GovInfo) — https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-mdd-8_25-cv-03686
• Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, 592 U.S. 395 (2021) (Supreme Court of the United States) — https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-511_p86b.pdf
• 47 U.S.C. § 227, Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment (Cornell Legal Information Institute) — https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/227
• Defeating TCPA Claims: How Tech Documentation and Do-Not-Call Registry Rules Protect Digital Debt Collection (TrueAccord Blog) — https://blog.trueaccord.com/2026/10/defeating-tcpa-claims-how-tech-documentation-and-do-not-call-registry-rules-protect-digital-debt-collection/
• Nickson v. TrueAccord Corp.: Vendor Proof Defeats ATDS Claim (Credit and Collection News) — https://www.creditandcollectionnews.com/nickson-v-trueaccord-corp-vendor-proof-defeats-atds-claim/