Compliance
Calling rules in Australia
Every automated call Bludge places is bound by the same window, the same disclosure and the same opt-out register. They ship switched on. You can make them stricter; you cannot make them looser.
These are the defaults for an Australian account. They are the ones the calling queue actually enforces — the hours below are the hours it reads before it dials, not a summary of them.
The calling window
Local time where the lead is. Outside it, a call is not skipped — it is moved to the next moment the window is open.
| Monday | 09:00 – 20:00 |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | 09:00 – 20:00 |
| Wednesday | 09:00 – 20:00 |
| Thursday | 09:00 – 20:00 |
| Friday | 09:00 – 20:00 |
| Saturday | 09:00 – 17:00 |
| Sunday | No calls |
| Public holidays | No calls |
- The window is judged where the lead is, not where you are. A lead in Perth is called on Perth time, and the same list called at once is dialled at different moments in different states. A lead with no address falls back to Australia/Sydney.
- Public holidays are taken from a maintained calendar and narrowed to the lead's own state, so a Melbourne Cup Day lead in Victoria is not called and one in Queensland is.
- These are the hours the service may call out in. They are not a switch on the phone: somebody who rings your own number is answered outside them too. How it answers.
The other defaults
Consent age
An enquiry older than 90 days is not called automatically. The queue cancels the attempt and records why; a spreadsheet upload counts the stale rows and shows the cutoff date before anything is imported.
The Do Not Call Register
A number on the register must not be called for telemarketing. Checking a list against it is done by an accredited washing service, and we have not contracted one, so no wash runs today. What does run is our own account-wide suppression list, and it is fed by every opt-out below. Keeping your own lists clear of the register is your obligation, not ours.
Opting out
A "stop" text is matched on the wordings people actually send, not just the word STOP. On a match the number is suppressed for the whole account — every lead on it, every number you call from, calls and texts alike — and the sender gets one confirmation. If somebody says it on the call instead, it is in the transcript and the number is marked from there.
stop stopall stop all unsubscribe cancel end quit optout opt out opt-out remove me do not call dont call don't call no more calls
Retries
Two attempts at most. The second is an hour after the first by default and is moved to the next open moment in the window if the hour lands outside it, so a late-afternoon miss is retried the next morning rather than that night. After that it stops calling, sends one text from your business name, and closes the lead.
Narrower, never wider
An assistant may open later, close earlier or switch a day off entirely. A save that opens earlier, closes later or adds a day the country does not allow is refused, and it says which day and what to do instead. The only way past it is an operator override on the account, which cannot be saved without a reason and is written to the log with the name of whoever set it.
Answering calls
The same assistant answers your Bludge number, in the same voice, from the same notes. The window above decides when it may call out. It does not decide when it may pick up — a call made to you is answered whenever it arrives, including at night, on a Sunday and on a public holiday.
The first thing an inbound caller hears“This is an AI assistant answering for Harbour Solar.”
Inside your hours
Inside your hours the assistant is told it is open. It asks how it can help, answers from the notes you wrote, says so when it does not know, and offers to bring somebody on your team into it. If booking is switched on it can put the caller straight into your calendar.
Outside them
Outside them it is told it is after hours, and it says so rather than pretending otherwise. It reads back the hours you configured — and only those: with no hours set it is instructed not to invent any. If you have switched booking on it offers a time in your calendar there and then, because somebody who rings at nine at night and is willing to take a time should be given one; with no calendar to offer it says somebody will call back on the next business day. Either way it takes their name, their number and what they are calling about, and reads the number back so it has it right.
- Ask for a person and it takes the message — the caller's name, their number and what they want — and leaves it on the call for your team to pick up. It does not put a live caller through to a human today. A call taken outside your hours is emailed to you with the transcript the moment it ends, so a message left at eleven at night is waiting for you rather than sitting in a list you have to go and look at.
- Nothing is recorded. Audio passes through while the call is happening and is not kept afterwards; what is kept is the transcript, against the call, readable in the admin. That is the same for a call you place and a call you take.
- A caller whose number matches a lead you already have is joined to that lead. One we have never seen becomes a new lead when the call ends, with the number, the name it captured and the transcript. Either way the call itself is on the account, with how long it ran and how it ended.
- If the voice service cannot take the call at that moment, the caller hears a short spoken apology and is asked to try again, rather than a number that rings out with nobody on it.
What it says first
The disclosure is spoken as its own pre-recorded line at the top of the call, before anything else. It is set per country in code, not in the admin, and an owner can add to it but cannot shorten or remove it. Your own business name goes where Harbour Solar, a made-up installer, sits below.
Outbound“This is an AI assistant calling on behalf of Harbour Solar about your enquiry.”
Inbound“This is an AI assistant answering for Harbour Solar.”
The rules behind this, in plain words
Do Not Call Register Act 2006
The Act behind the register. In plain terms, unsolicited telemarketing calls must not be made to a number on it, and the responsibility for checking sits with whoever is doing the calling.
Telecommunications (Telemarketing and Research Calls) Industry Standard 2017
The standard that sets the permitted hours, and requires a caller to say who is calling and on whose behalf, and to end the call when asked. It is written about telemarketing generally, not about synthetic voices, so we treat an AI voice as bound by all of it.
Spam Act 2003
Covers the confirmation and follow-up text messages. A commercial message needs consent, has to identify the sender, and has to carry a way to stop it — which is why every text we send accepts a reply of "stop".
None of this is legal advice. It is a description of what our software does by default in Australia. You are the caller, and what you are allowed to do with your own list is a question for your own adviser.