How does somebody opt out?

By replying STOP, which is honoured immediately, permanently, and across every seat in the brokerage.

Can I put somebody back on the list?

Not through the product. There is no re-opt-in flow, deliberately: a control that can be undone from the same screen that respects it is not much of a control.

Does an opt-out on one agent’s thread affect the others?

Yes. That is what "one list, every seat" means. The check is keyed on the phone number and is global.

What about numbers that were never textable?

Dropped at import, before they enter the process at all. More on import.

Opt-out

One opt-out list, every seat.

A STOP from one person is honoured everywhere in the brokerage, permanently, and checked again at the moment of sending, not only when the message was written.

Trust How import works

Three separate mechanisms, and they are not redundant

Dropped at import

Numbers that cannot or must not be texted leave at the door rather than being filtered later. A row that never entered the process cannot be texted by a later bug, a re-run of a job, or somebody clicking the wrong thing. That covers not-textable numbers and anyone marked do-not-contact in the export.

Refused at compose

Lewis will not write a message to a lead you have marked do-not-contact. The refusal is at the point of composing, which is where it can be acted on, rather than at the point of sending, where it can only be reported.

That distinction was learned the hard way. A do-not-contact re-check at send time once fired on a mark the product had set itself: the closing message to a lost lead was queued, the flag went on one line later, and at the autonomy level every account starts on that goodbye then sat waiting for a human while the flag it would be refused for was already set. The product asked permission, got it, and refused itself over a flag the agent had never seen.

Re-checked at send

The opt-out check specifically is re-run at the moment of sending, because that one is different in kind: it is keyed on the phone number, it is global across every seat, and it is a legal obligation rather than one agent’s filing. Somebody may have replied STOP to a colleague between the draft being written and the draft going out.

Scope

Global. One list for the brokerage, not per agent and not per campaign.
Permanent. There is no expiry and no re-opt-in flow in the product.
Keyed on the number, so it survives the same person appearing twice in two exports under two spellings of their name.

What Lewis does not do

It does not cold-text strangers. The lists it works are lists you already own and already had a relationship with, and everything it sends is a reply or a follow-up in a conversation you were already part of.

On a phone, the transport will only ever text the handle that texted us. That is a physical property of how delivery works rather than a policy, and it is one of two independent reasons a cold text cannot reach somebody through this product.