TCPA Fines in 2026: Real Cases and What They Cost

TCPA violations carry statutory damages of $500 per violation, rising to $1,500 per violation if a court finds it willful or knowing — and because each unwanted call or text counts as a separate violation, exposure multiplies fast across a calling list. In practice, this has produced settlements ranging from under $1 million for small class actions to a record $299,997,000 FCC penalty against ten companies behind an auto warranty robocall scheme. Litigation volume has surged too: Q1 2025 alone saw 507 TCPA class actions filed, a 112% increase over Q1 2024, and average class-action settlements now sit around $6.6 million.

This article walks through real, named cases, what they actually cost, and the operational failures behind each one — so you can see exactly where the legal exposure comes from and how to close it. For the full framework behind these numbers, see our TCPA Compliance Guide for Outbound Sales Teams.

Why TCPA Fines Are Getting Bigger and More Frequent

Outbound calling and texting programs are colliding with a legal environment that has become measurably less forgiving. Three forces are driving this:

• Filing volume has roughly doubled. By September 2025, 1,807 TCPA class actions had already been filed year-to-date, putting 2025 on pace to approach or exceed 2,400 total filings — nearly double 2024’s volume.
• The TCPA’s private right of action removes the government as a gatekeeper. Any individual can sue without government involvement, and plaintiffs’ attorneys file thousands of cases a year, with class actions driving the largest settlements.
• New consent rules closed old loopholes. The FCC’s one-to-one consent rule, effective January 2025, ended the practice of a single consent form covering multiple sellers — a change that directly produced one of the cases below.

This is the regulatory backdrop that makes dialer ratio, consent capture, and DNC scrubbing more than compliance checkboxes — they are the difference between a clean campaign and a seven- or eight-figure settlement. See how these controls work together on our Outbound Compliance page.

What a TCPA Violation Actually Costs (Statutory Framework)

The multiplier effect is what turns modest per-call penalties into massive settlements. A campaign that places 10,000 unauthorized calls carries a theoretical statutory exposure of $5 million to $15 million before a single settlement negotiation begins. That arithmetic is why large, well-resourced companies with compliance teams still end up settling for tens of millions rather than litigating to a verdict.

Real TCPA Cases and What They Cost

The Largest Fine on Record: $299,997,000 (FCC, Auto Warranty Robocalls)

In August 2023, the FCC issued its largest-ever TCPA penalty, fining ten companies a combined $299,997,000 over an auto warranty robocall scheme. This case remains the ceiling reference point for TCPA enforcement — the operation ran entirely without consent verification, at massive scale.

Keller Williams Realty: $40 Million

Keller Williams Realty settled for $40 million over unauthorized autodialed calls — one of the largest real estate industry TCPA settlements on record, and a reminder that franchise and multi-agent outbound operations carry concentrated risk: a violation pattern across hundreds of agents scales into a single massive class.

Realogy / Coldwell Banker: $20 Million

Realogy Brokerage Group agreed to a $20 million settlement resolving a class action brought on behalf of 298,494 class members, after an estimated 700,000 phone calls were placed by Coldwell Banker-affiliated agents between 2015 and 2020 to numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry, using a third-party dialing platform. Of the $20 million fund, $12.6 million was earmarked for distribution to class members.

Key pattern: Realogy’s calls were placed through a third-party dialing vendor — and the brand still paid the settlement. Courts have repeatedly held businesses vicariously liable for calls made on their behalf, regardless of which platform placed them.

National Grid: $38.5 Million

Utility provider National Grid’s 2024 settlement is frequently cited by compliance analysts as the benchmark “mega-settlement” that skews industry averages upward — a single case large enough to pull the reported mean settlement value well above the more typical mid-single-digit-million range.

QuoteWizard.com: $19 Million

A $19 million settlement resolved litigation against QuoteWizard.com over alleged spam texts sent to numbers listed on the National Do Not Call Registry. Lead generation and insurance-comparison platforms are disproportionately represented in TCPA litigation because they operate at extremely high list volume with third-party-sourced leads — exactly the profile where consent provenance is hardest to verify.

Zales Jewelers: $7.5 Million

Zales Jewelers agreed to pay more than $7.5 million to resolve a class action filed over alleged TCPA violations in September 2025 — evidence that retail SMS marketing programs, not just outbound call centers, sit squarely inside TCPA exposure.

Albertsons / Safeway: $5.95 Million

A $5.95 million settlement resolved a class action alleging Albertsons Companies and its affiliates sent telemarketing calls and texts without consent, closing out litigation in August 2025.

Truist Bank: $4.1 Million

A $4.1 million settlement ended a class action against Truist Bank alleging the company illegally placed pre-recorded calls — a reminder that financial services firms, despite typically having mature compliance functions, are not immune when prerecorded-message consent isn’t airtight.

Aidvantage: $3 Million

Student loan servicer Aidvantage agreed to a $3 million settlement over claims it placed unsolicited robocalls using an artificial or prerecorded voice without recipients’ consent, with individual class members expected to recover between $500 and $1,000 each.

Comodo Group & Register.com: $1.5–$1.625 Million

A $1.625 million settlement resolved litigation against Comodo Group over allegations of sending pre-recorded telemarketing calls without consent — proof that mid-sized B2B software companies are not too small to draw class-action attention. Register.com agreed to pay $1.5 million after identifying 1,652 calls to 453 unique reassigned numbers, a case built entirely on failing to check the FCC’s Reassigned Numbers Database before dialing.

Case Pattern Summary

Two failure modes appear in nearly every case above: missing or unverifiable consent, and failure to cross-check numbers against DNC or reassignment databases before dialing. Neither requires a sophisticated fix — both require dial-time automation that most manual compliance processes simply can’t sustain at volume.

What These Cases Have in Common (The Data-Driven Pattern)

• Settlement size scales with list size, not company size. Comodo, a mid-market software firm, settled in roughly the same range as consumer brands with far larger revenue — because exposure is calculated per violation, not per company valuation.
• Third-party dialing vendors don’t shield the brand. In the Realogy case, the calls were placed through a third-party platform, and the brand still paid the settlement.
• The plaintiffs’ bar targets consent and DNC gaps specifically, because those are the elements easiest to prove with call records and registry data — which is exactly why most cases concentrate in California, Florida, Illinois, and New York.

How to Reduce TCPA Fine Exposure Before It Becomes a Case

Every case above traces back to one of a small number of preventable gaps:

• Verify consent at the point of dial, not just at list intake. Consent can lapse, be revoked, or apply to a number that’s since been reassigned.
• Cross-check every number against the National DNC Registry and the FCC’s Reassigned Numbers Database before dialing — not on a batch schedule, but in real time.
• Apply the one-to-one consent standard for any list built from third-party or aggregated lead sources.
• Log consent, disposition, and call recordings automatically, so contemporaneous records exist if a claim is filed.
• Treat abandoned call rate and dialer ratio as compliance controls, not just productivity settings.

Bottom line: a structured compliance stack — real-time DNC and consent checks, automated call logging, and abandoned-call monitoring — is what separates the companies in the table above from the ones that never make the news.

Frequently Asked Questions