Do Not Call Compliance for Solar Sales: Why Complaint Volume Is Rising

The Trend: Complaint Volume Nearly Doubled Year Over Year

FTC Do Not Call complaints averaged roughly 73,000 per month in 2024 and climbed to roughly 113,000 per month in 2025, alongside about 4.8 million new phone numbers added to the DNC registry. That is a general FTC telemarketing figure covering all industries, not a solar-specific count, but the direction of the trend applies to every business making outbound calls in 2026, solar included.

A separate figure worth naming honestly: 151 cumulative FTC telemarketing enforcement actions have recovered $178 million in penalties and $112 million in restitution. That number is industry-wide as well, and what share of it touches solar specifically is not broken out in available reporting, so treat it as regulatory-climate evidence, not a solar-specific enforcement tally.

Why Rising Complaint Volume Matters Even Without a Solar-Specific Number

Regulators do not need a sector-specific complaint count to open an investigation into a specific company. A rising complaint environment generally means more scrutiny capacity, more consumer awareness of how to file a complaint, and less tolerance across the board, all of which raise the odds that a sloppy calling program in any industry, solar included, draws attention.

That is the honest argument for taking DNC discipline seriously even in the absence of a solar-specific complaint statistic: the regulatory environment around outbound calling generally is not getting more forgiving.

What Real DNC Compliance Requires

A number needs to be checked against Do Not Call status before every campaign it is used in, not once when a list is first built. Lists age, homeowners register with the DNC registry after a list was compiled, and consent status can change, so a check performed months ago does not certify a number today.

With roughly 4.8 million new numbers added to the registry in 2025 alone, a list that was clean when it was pulled can have DNC-registered numbers sitting in it a few months later. That is the practical argument for re-checking before every campaign, not a one-time intake step.

Why Outsourcing Your Calling Doesn't Outsource the Complaint

If a vendor calling on your behalf ignores Do Not Call status, the complaint tends to land on the business name the homeowner actually recognizes from the call, which is typically the solar company whose brand was pitched, not a vendor name the homeowner never heard. Momentum Solar's TCPA settlement, covered in the companion TCPA guide, is the clearest example of that dynamic: the company whose brand was on the call carried the exposure. Vetting a vendor's DNC practices before signing is the practical way to manage that risk, not something to assume is automatic because a vendor says "we're compliant."

Questions to Ask Before Trusting a Vendor's DNC Claim

• Do they check Do Not Call status before every campaign, or only when a list was first built?
• Do they keep dated records showing which numbers were suppressed and why?
• Do they dial live, by hand, or run calls through an autodialer?
• What is their process when a number that should have been suppressed gets dialed anyway, and how fast is it corrected?

A vendor who answers specifically, not generically, is telling you something real about how the program actually runs.

Sources

The external data in this guide draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.

• Corporate Compliance Insights, how 2025 redefined telemarketing compliance
• ClassAction.org, Momentum Solar settlement ends TCPA robocall class actions

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