How customers opt out

Every message RateMate sends ends with "Reply STOP to opt out." Your customer does not need to tell you or find a setting. They reply, and RateMate acts on it.

What your customer can reply

• STOP stops messages from one business. The words UNSUBSCRIBE, OPT OUT and OPT-OUT do the same. Capital letters do not matter.
• STOP ALL stops every business that uses RateMate from messaging them.
• START turns messages back on from one business. UNSTOP, SUBSCRIBE, OPT IN and OPT-IN do the same.

RateMate reads only these exact words. A sentence such as "please stop" is not read as a request. On SMS, the SMS provider also spots some other wordings, and when it does, RateMate stops every business.

Which business a STOP applies to

All messages leave from one RateMate number, so RateMate works out the business from who messaged that number last. If your customer replies STOP, it applies to the business that sent them a message in the last 90 days, and in particular the most recent one. Other businesses can still message them.

If no business sent to that number in the last 90 days, STOP applies to every business, because RateMate cannot tell which one they meant.

In your list the customer then shows as Opted out, and RateMate sends them nothing more. A request already waiting to go is cancelled. See Opt a customer out or back in.

What your customer gets back

RateMate replies once to confirm.

• After STOP, the reply names the business, says they will not hear from it again, and tells them to reply STOP ALL to stop all messages sent through RateMate.
• After STOP ALL, the reply says they are unsubscribed from all messages sent through RateMate.
• After START, the reply says the business can message them again, and that STOP opts out at any time.

These confirmations do not use your notifications. A customer who replies STOP twice gets the reminder both times.

START

START works for one business only: the one that messaged them last in the past 90 days. It works even after a STOP ALL, and it does not undo the other businesses they stopped. If there is nothing to turn back on, nothing happens. You can then see their consent shown as "Customer replied START".

The SMS caveat

SMS replies behave differently. The SMS provider blocks a number across the whole account the moment it texts STOP, so a customer who replies STOP to an SMS may be blocked from every RateMate SMS, and the confirmation text itself may not arrive. WhatsApp does not work this way.

Treat any STOP as final. If you need to speak to that customer, call them yourself. Replied by mistake? See My customer replied STOP by mistake.

Good to know

• Every opt-out is recorded in the customer's audit trail, with how it happened.
• A customer who opted out and then scans your QR code on WhatsApp gets no reply.