This Policy governs the use of Local Flow to send, prepare, schedule, or manage customer-facing messages, including text messages and email — appointment confirmations, reminders, arrival notices, quotes, invoices, receipts, payment follow-ups, review requests, and re-engagement messages.
It applies to every business using Local Flow and to every person who sends a message from a Local Flow account. It is incorporated into the Terms of Service.
The short version: the business sending the message is the sender. Local Flow delivers what you tell it to deliver. Consent, content, and timing are yours.
You must have consent from each recipient before messaging them, and you must be able to show it.
Text messages to mobile numbers are regulated in the United States by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and FCC rules, and separately by mobile carrier requirements. Statutory damages under the TCPA run from $500 to $1,500 per message, and they are assessed against the sender.
Marketing messages require prior express written consent. Purely transactional or service messages to a customer who gave you their number for that purpose require prior express consent, which may be given verbally. When in doubt, treat a message as marketing.
Never import purchased lists, scraped contacts, numbers from public directories, or contacts who have not given your business permission. Consent is never transferable between businesses — a customer who opted in with one company has not opted in with any other, including another company using Local Flow.
Consent to receive text messages is collected verbally. There is no public web form on which a recipient enters their own number.
Customers: when a customer contacts a business to request or schedule service — by phone, in person, or at the job site — the business asks for the customer’s mobile number and tells them it will be used for appointment confirmations, reminders, arrival notices, quotes, invoices, and payment receipts. A staff member then enters that number into Local Flow. The customer’s agreement during that conversation is the opt-in.
Employees and team members: a business owner or admin asks a prospective team member whether they may be added to the company account, then enters their mobile number on the Team screen in Local Flow to send a single invitation link. Accepting that invitation confirms consent.
Local Flow does not sell, rent, buy, or share mobile numbers with third parties for marketing purposes, and does not send messages to purchased or scraped lists. Consent is never transferred between businesses: a customer who opted in with one business has not opted in with any other.
However you take consent, the person must be told, at the time they give it:
Where consent is taken verbally, say these things out loud during the call or at the door. Where it is taken on paper or on your own website, they must appear next to where the number is given, not buried in a linked document.
Records of consent are the defense. In a dispute, the question is not whether consent existed but whether you can prove it. Keep, for each recipient: who gave consent, when, through what channel, and what they were told.
Local Flow records when a customer was added, by whom, and the message history for that customer. That is a supporting record, not a substitute for your own. If you take consent verbally, note it in the customer record at the time.
Keep consent records for at least four years after the last message, which covers the federal limitation period.
Every message must make clear who is sending it. Identify your business by name in the first message of any conversation or campaign, and in every marketing message.
Do not send a message that could be mistaken for coming from someone else, and do not disguise or misrepresent the sending number.
Every recipient may opt out at any time, and an opt-out must be honored immediately and permanently until they ask to start again.
Recognized keywords. At minimum: STOP, QUIT, END, CANCEL, UNSUBSCRIBE, REVOKE, and OPT-OUT. These are honored automatically at the carrier and platform level, and are treated as valid however they are capitalized or punctuated, and whether or not other words appear in the message.
Confirmation. A single confirmation message may be sent acknowledging the opt-out. It must contain no marketing content of any kind — no offer, no “we’re sorry to see you go, here’s a discount,” nothing. One message, confirming the stop, and then silence.
HELP. Replying HELP must return your business name and a way to reach you.
This is the rule most often missed, and it is not optional. A person may revoke consent through any reasonable means — not only by replying STOP. If a customer tells your technician at the door to stop texting them, emails you, calls the office, or says so on a web form, that is a valid opt-out.
An opt-out received through a channel other than a keyword reply must be honored within 10 business days, and in practice should be entered immediately. You must record it in Local Flow so that automated messages stop; the platform cannot know about a conversation it never saw.
You may not require a person to use a specific method, form, or keyword to opt out, and you may not make opting out harder than opting in.
Note on a rule still to come: the FCC has adopted, and repeatedly delayed, a provision requiring a revocation given for one kind of message to be treated as applying to all future non-emergency messages from the same sender. Its effective date has moved to January 31, 2027. Treating any opt-out as broad rather than narrow is the safer practice now.
Do not send marketing messages before 8:00 a.m. or after 9:00 p.m. in the recipient’s local time zone. Several states impose narrower windows and some restrict Sundays and holidays; where state law is stricter, it governs.
Genuinely time-sensitive service messages — a technician arriving, an appointment starting shortly — are treated differently from marketing, but use judgment: a 6:00 a.m. reminder that could have been sent the previous evening is not a courtesy.
Keep frequency reasonable and consistent with what the recipient was told at opt-in. Repeated unwanted messages generate complaints, and complaints get numbers blocked by carriers regardless of whether consent existed.
Transactional: confirming an appointment, saying a technician is on the way, sending a quote, invoice, or receipt, or following up on an unpaid balance for work performed. These relate to a transaction the customer asked for.
Marketing: promotions, discounts, seasonal offers, re-engagement of a lapsed customer, and referral campaigns. These need the stronger consent described in Section 2, must observe quiet hours, and must honor marketing opt-outs.
A transactional message with an offer attached is a marketing message. Adding “and ask about our maintenance plan” to an invoice text changes what that message is.
You may not use Local Flow to send:
Commercial email is governed by CAN-SPAM. Every commercial email you send must: identify the sender accurately, use a subject line that is not deceptive, include a valid physical postal address, include a working unsubscribe mechanism, and honor an unsubscribe within 10 business days. Transactional email is exempt from some but not all of these.
Review requests may be sent to customers you have actually served. You may not offer or imply compensation in exchange for a positive review, condition a benefit on the rating given, filter who is asked based on predicted sentiment, or write or edit a review on a customer’s behalf. The FTC treats incentivized and gated reviews as deceptive, and platforms remove them.
Referral messages may be sent to your own customers. You may not message the person being referred unless they have consented themselves — a third party’s number handed to you is not consent from its owner.
Local Flow records message content, recipients, timestamps, delivery status returned by the provider, and opt-out status. These are used to deliver messages, show you what was sent, support you, prevent abuse, and meet carrier and legal obligations.
Delivery status reflects what the provider reported — that a message was accepted or delivered to a carrier. It is not proof that a person read it.
Retention is described in the Privacy Policy.
We may block, delay, rate-limit, or refuse messages that appear to violate this Policy, the law, or carrier rules, and may suspend messaging for an account where the risk requires it — including without prior notice where the risk is immediate.
We may also act on instruction from a carrier or messaging provider. Carriers can block numbers and campaigns on their own initiative, and that outcome is not within our control.
US messaging requires the sending number to be registered with carriers, through toll-free verification or A2P 10DLC registration. Registration involves disclosing the use case, sample messages, and how consent is obtained. Information you give us for registration must be accurate; an inaccurate registration can result in the number being blocked for every business using it.
Numbers, registrations, and throughput are administered by us and our messaging provider. You may not attempt to send through the Service using a number or route you have not been assigned, and you may not use the Service to send on behalf of a business other than your own.
You are the sender. You are responsible for consent, content, timing, opt-out handling, and compliance with the TCPA, CAN-SPAM, state law, and carrier rules for every message sent from your account, including messages sent by your employees.
Local Flow provides the tooling and delivers what you instruct. We do not review message content for legal compliance before sending, and providing a feature is not advice that your use of it is lawful. Indemnification is covered by Terms of Service §22, and the division of responsibility by §15 of the same document.
If you received a message and want it to stop: reply STOP to that message. You will get one confirmation and nothing further. Reply HELP for the sending business’s details.
If you are not sure who messaged you, the message identifies the business that scheduled your service. Questions about your service, appointment, or invoice should go to that business — they hold your record, not us.
If a business is ignoring your opt-out, email Support@local-flow.app with the number and approximate date. We will investigate and can block messaging from that account.
Message and data rates may apply. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.
Local-Flow App LLC, 14153 S Lasso CT, Draper, UT 84020 · Support@local-flow.app