SMS Opt-Outs: What STOP Does and How Customers Opt Back In

Why a customer who replies STOP stops receiving every text from your business, why it applies across all of your Rotor numbers, and the only way to undo it.

Written By Sean MacCourtney

Last updated About 2 hours ago

Texting in Rotor goes out over a registered business number, which means it follows carrier rules — not Rotor's. The biggest one: when a customer replies STOP, the carrier blocks your texts to that person immediately, before Rotor ever sees the message. Nobody on your team, and nobody at Rotor, can undo it. Only the customer can.

Here is what triggers it, what it breaks, and what to do when it happens.

Words That Trigger an Opt-Out

Carriers scan every inbound text for these keywords. Any one of them, sent on its own, opts the customer out:

STOP
STOPALL
UNSUBSCRIBE
CANCEL
END
QUIT

Capitalization does not matter — "Stop" and "stop" both count. The keyword buried inside a sentence usually does not trigger it ("stop by around 3" is fine), but a message that is only the keyword will.

CANCEL is the one that catches people out. A customer trying to cancel an appointment who replies just "Cancel" has opted out of every text you send, and almost certainly did not mean to.

What Happens After They Opt Out

The carrier sends an automatic confirmation ("You have been unsubscribed..."). This is not something you can edit or turn off.
Your outbound texts to that customer stop going out. In the conversation thread the message shows as Failed with the reason Contact opted out of SMS.
Nothing is sent and nothing is charged — the message simply never leaves.
It covers everything: visit reminders, on-the-way texts, invoice and payment reminders, review requests, and one-to-one messages your team types by hand. The carrier does not separate "marketing" from "operational."
Email and phone calls are unaffected. A customer who opted out of texts can still receive emailed notifications and still be called.

It Applies to Every Number You Own

This is the part that surprises people most.

Your company has one messaging account with our carrier provider, and every Rotor number you own sits inside it — your main line, an office or secretary line, a sales line, a separate campaign number. The opt-out is recorded against the customer, not against the number they replied to.

So if someone replies STOP to your campaign number, your office staff can no longer text them from the office number either. Same account, same opt-out list.

Buying another number will not fix it. A new number joins the same messaging account and inherits the same opt-out list. It is also not something you should try to work around — texting someone who opted out after routing them to a different number is exactly what carriers and the FCC audit for, and it puts your number registration at risk.

How a Customer Opts Back In

The customer texts START to any of your numbers. UNSTOP and YES also work.

It has to come from them, from that phone. There is no setting in Rotor that reverses it, and Rotor support cannot reverse it either — the block lives at the carrier.
It takes effect immediately. Your next message goes through normally.

The practical move: if you have the customer on the phone, ask them to text START to your number while you are still on the line, then send a quick test message to confirm it went through.

What To Do In the Meantime

Situation	What to do
They still want reminders — the STOP was an accident	Call them and ask them to text START
They genuinely do not want texts, but still need notices	Make sure email is enabled on their notifications
You need to reach them today	Call or email — those still work
They insist they never opted out	Scroll the conversation thread for a lone `STOP` or `CANCEL` reply. It is usually there.

Tips

Never tell a customer to reply CANCEL. If you want them to be able to call off a visit by text, ask them to reply RESCHEDULE instead.
Say who you are in every message. A lot of STOP replies are really "I don't know who this is." Include {your_company_name} in your templates.
Watch your frequency. A day-before reminder plus an on-the-way text is useful. Four texts about one visit reads as spam, and spam gets STOP.
Only text numbers customers gave you for that purpose. Texting a number scraped from an old invoice is the fastest way to collect opt-outs and carrier complaints.

Congratulations! You can now handle SMS opt-outs and help customers opt back in to texts from Rotor.

Have additional questions? Our team is ready to help you succeed. Contact us through the chat or drop us an email at support@getrotor.com.

Message Templates — add your company name to every text
Client Messaging Settings — control which texts and emails customers get
A2P 10DLC Registration — how your business number is registered with carriers
Send a Reminder 1 Day Before a Visit — set up a useful reminder without over-texting

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