A string of multimillion-dollar settlements under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act has been finalized this spring, and the cases share a common thread that should concern any business that calls or texts customers. From the jewelry retailer Zales to Truist Bank, companies are paying significant sums to resolve claims that they contacted consumers who never should have been on their calling lists.
The recent settlements
Zales agreed to pay $7.54 million to resolve allegations that it sent unsolicited marketing text messages to consumers whose numbers were listed on the National Do Not Call Registry. The settlement covers roughly 75,000 phone numbers, with approved claimants receiving up to $100 each; the settlement administrator began issuing payments in May 2026.
Truist Bank agreed to a $4.1 million settlement over allegations that it placed prerecorded calls about accounts to people who were not the intended recipients and had not consented to receive them. The lawsuit described a consumer who received roughly two dozen automated calls meant for a Truist account holder. About 6,000 phone numbers were covered, with class members expected to receive around $440 each.
Other companies have settled on similar facts. The warranty provider Everything Breaks agreed to pay approximately $995,000 to resolve claims of repeated telemarketing robocalls to consumers on the National Do Not Call Registry — the same core allegation as the Zales case, on a smaller scale.
A record-setting litigation environment
These settlements are part of a broader surge. According to litigation trackers, more TCPA class actions were filed in the first quarter of 2026 than in any quarter in history. The TCPA allows consumers to recover statutory damages of $500 to $1,500 for each violating call or text, which means that even a single campaign sent to a large list of improper numbers can generate enormous potential liability.
The common failures
The pattern across these cases is striking because the mistakes are basic. In the Zales and Everything Breaks matters, the core allegation was contacting consumers registered on the National Do Not Call Registry — a list-screening failure. In the Truist matter, the issue was calling reassigned or incorrect numbers — a data-quality failure. None of these involved cutting-edge legal theories. They involved ordinary outbound programs operating on lists that were not properly cleaned.
What businesses should do
Companies that conduct telephone or text marketing should screen their contact lists against the National Do Not Call Registry on a current and regular basis, maintain internal do-not-call records that are synchronized across all systems, and verify that the numbers they call still belong to the intended customers. Keeping clear records of consent and opt-out requests is equally important, since the inability to prove compliant practices is often what pushes a company toward settlement.
Many businesses now add a final safeguard before any calling or texting campaign goes out: screening their contact lists against a known-litigator database. TCPALitigatorList.com compiles one of the most widely used lists of professional TCPA plaintiffs and serial filers, giving companies a low-cost way to identify and suppress high-risk numbers before a campaign launches rather than discovering them in a demand letter weeks later.
The takeaway
The Zales, Truist and Everything Breaks settlements show that TCPA exposure in 2026 is driven less by complex legal arguments than by routine operational lapses. With class action filings at record levels, businesses that invest in disciplined list management are far better protected than those that do not.
Sources
Top Class Actions — “$7.54M Zales TCPA class action settlement”; PIX11 — “Zales $7.54M class action settlement”; Top Class Actions — “$4.1M Truist Bank class action settlement”; Class Action.org — “$4.1M Truist Bank Settlement”; CompliancePoint and Shipkevich PLLC — 2026 TCPA litigation trend reporting.