Why Washington makes you end a call within 10 seconds on request

What Washington HB-1497 actually says

Washington state's HB-1497 took effect on June 9, 2022. It expanded telemarketing rules beyond pure sales calls to cover any organization soliciting money — charities and non-profits included. The law shares some DNA with Florida's mini-TCPA: the same 8 a.m.–8 p.m. Permitted calling hours window applies in Washington. But the two laws part ways on several points.

Washington does not carry over Florida's three-calls-in-24-hours cap, nor does it require express written consent before dialing. What it does carry is two requirements that directly affect live-agent outbound operations.

The two hard requirements for outbound callers

1. Identify yourself within 30 seconds. As soon as the call connects, the solicitor must state who they are and who they are calling on behalf of — within the first 30 seconds of the call.
2. End the call within 10 seconds on request. If, at any point during the call, the person being called states or indicates they want to end the call, the telephone solicitor must hang up within 10 seconds. No exceptions, no finishing a sentence.

The 10-second rule is the sharper edge here. Most agents intuitively comply with a request to hang up, but "within 10 seconds" makes it a measurable legal obligation. If you have call recordings — which VICIdial supports natively through Call recording — those recordings can be used to verify compliance (or expose violations).

How this plays out in a VICIdial workflow

sequenceDiagram
  participant Dialer
  participant Agent
  participant Contact
  Dialer->>Contact: Outbound call connects
  Agent->>Contact: Identifies self and org within 30s
  Contact->>Agent: States they want to end the call
  Note over Agent: 10-second clock starts
  Agent->>Dialer: Disposition and hang up
  Note over Dialer: Call ends within 10s of request

Your Agent script is the practical place to enforce the 30-second identification requirement. Put the caller ID statement at the very top of the script — the first line the agent reads — so it runs before anything else. Agents should never work from memory on this; the script forces the behavior.

For the 10-second hang-up rule, training is the primary control. Agents need to understand that any indication of wanting to end the call — not just a flat refusal, but phrases like "I have to go" or "not interested, bye" — triggers the clock. A Disposition of DNC or similar should follow immediately.

DNC handling after the call

Washington does not explicitly define a state-level DNC registry the way some states do, but contacts who express a wish not to be called again should be added to your Internal DNC list immediately. VICIdial can auto-add a number to the internal DNC list based on disposition codes, which removes any manual step that could cause a re-dial.

HB-1497 applies broadly: sales, charitable solicitations, political fundraising calls — if you are dialing into Washington state and asking for money or a commitment, review whether this law covers your campaign type.

Putting it in context

Washington is one of several states that layered their own telemarketing rules on top of federal FTC and FCC requirements. For a full map of the compliance landscape, see the VICIdial compliance overview. If you dial into Connecticut or Mississippi, those states have taken even more aggressive positions — covered in the near-total cold-calling bans you should know about.

If you want help configuring VICIdial campaigns to enforce calling-time restrictions and DNC routing correctly, see our pricing options for managed hosting and compliance configuration support.