Communications consent

Where the number goes

Two parties may ring you off the back of this, and there is no third. Us — the marketing operation that owns these pages, pays for the line and takes the notes. And one licensed Pennsylvania mortgage lender, the one your inquiry is handed to. Your number does not go onto a list, into a pool, or out to a room of companies that all dial inside the same minute. Should that first lender not handle your kind of loan, another may take it, and we say so when that happens.

Two permissions, and the spoken one is smaller

The box on the form and the question read out on the phone are separate things, and the phone version asks for less.

The box covers calls, texts and email, at the number and the address you typed in, and it names automatic dialing and artificial or recorded voices because federal rules require a consent permitting those to say so on its face.

The spoken one covers a single thing: ringing or texting you back on the number you dialed from, about the inquiry you have just made. No dialing technology is named in it at all, and no email address, because the line takes neither. Answer no and nobody rings you. The inquiry still gets written down, flagged so that no lender may be handed it.

The sentence beside the box

The box arrives unticked, always, and the form refuses to send until you tick it yourself. Here it is whole, exactly as it appears down there.

By ticking this box I am agreeing, in writing, that Mortgage Montgomery County, PA and the licensed Pennsylvania mortgage lender who takes up my request may reach me about it at the phone number and email address I have entered here — by phone call, by text message and by email, including calls or texts placed using an automatic telephone dialing system and messages carried by an artificial, prerecorded or AI-generated voice, and including where my number sits on a national or state Do Not Call list. Consent is not a condition of purchase — none of this is a condition of buying anything from anybody. Standard message and data rates may apply and STOP replied to any text ends the texts. This box is not a loan application, nobody reviews my credit because I ticked it, and my credit score is not affected either way.

Reading it clause by clause

• Who. Us, and one licensed Pennsylvania mortgage lender — the one that takes the request up. Nobody else sits inside that sentence.
• How. By phone call, by text message, by email, at the number and the address you handed over.
• With what. An automatic telephone dialing system is inside the permission, as are messages carried by an artificial, prerecorded or AI-generated voice. This line is answered by an automated assistant, which federal rules count as an artificial voice, so the sentence names it rather than leaving it to be discovered later.
• Do Not Call. Ticking the box lets both parties reach that number even where that number sits on a national or state Do Not Call list. Overriding that registration is the whole legal work the box does, and the reason it is there at all.
• Not a condition. Consent is not a condition of purchase. Leave it unticked and ring (610) 735-7774 instead, or use the contact page; the conversation on the other end is the same one.
• Not an application. Sending the form asks to be called about mortgage financing, and does no more than that. Nothing is underwritten off it, nobody pulls your credit file because of it, and your score is untouched either way.
• Costs. Your own plan may charge standard message and data rates. Reply STOP to any text and the texts stop. We charge you nothing, at any stage.

What the line does at three in the morning

An automated assistant answers every call to (610) 735-7774, at every hour, business hours included. Its opening line says the call is recorded and asks whether that is all right, because Pennsylvania wants everyone on a call to agree before the recording starts. Say you would rather not be, and hanging up there is a reasonable thing to do. Ask it outright whether it is a person and it will say, plainly, that it is not — it does not raise that unprompted, and it never pretends otherwise.

It asks about ten things: buying or refinancing, which township or borough the house sits in, roughly what price, how soon, how your credit looks from where you are sitting. Then it reads the callback permission aloud, whole, and keeps your answer in the words you used. It will not quote a rate. It will not call a loan approved. It will not pass itself off as a person, and it will not take a Social Security number. Catch it doing any of the four and tell us, and the recording gets pulled.

This number takes calls and does not place them, so nothing described on this page begins an outbound marketing call to you.

Calling it off

Whenever you like, for whatever reason, with nothing to explain and nothing to pay:

• Use the contact page.
• Say "stop calling" out loud, to us or to the lender. Anything that plainly means it counts.
• Reply STOP to a text.
• Privacy requests, which also carries the stronger version: hand my inquiry to nobody at all.

We act on it the moment it reaches us, and inside ten business days at the very outside, and the lender your inquiry went to is told. That lender keeps a consent record of its own, separate from ours, so say it to them directly as well. Ring us if working out who to say it to is the hard part.

The proof we hold

Filed against every inquiry: the version number of the consent wording, and the wording itself as it stood on screen. The minute it was sent. The IP address it came from, the browser string, and the page it was sent off. The lender that received it, with the reason that one received it. Calls are filed with their recording or transcript. Five years, which is how far back federal telemarketing rules expect anyone to be able to prove consent.

That file exists for one particular afternoon — the one where somebody insists no mortgage company was ever given leave to ring them. A timestamp, a page and an exact sentence settle it. Memory does not, ours included.

What to do next

Read the four sentences beside the box before you tick it; they are the only part of the form carrying legal weight. What happens to the information afterwards is in the privacy policy, the rest of the arrangement is in the terms of use, and what the first call is like covers who does what once a lender has it. If a call has already come and you want it stopped, that takes about fifteen seconds on the phone.