It depends entirely on the state, and there is no national deadline. The four windows verified for this builder against the board's own rule or statute: California — 4 years (patent) / 10 years (latent structural), running from the act or omission complained of, not from completion (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 7091). Texas — 2 years from the event giving rise to the complaint, with later complaints investigated at the discretion of TDLR's director of enforcement (16 Tex. Admin. Code § 60.201). Arizona — 2 years, from the earlier of close of escrow or actual occupancy on new construction, or from completion of the specific project otherwise (A.R.S. § 32-1162). Oregon — 1 year (existing structure) from substantial completion or the date work ceased on an existing structure, or on a new structure the earlier of one year from first occupancy and two years from substantial completion (ORS 701.143). Notice that all four measure from a different event. If your state is not one of those four, check your board's own complaint page — this template will tell your customer to do exactly that rather than print a number nobody verified.

No, and conflating them is a common and consequential mistake. A licensing board complaint asks a regulator to discipline a license; the window for filing it is set by that board. A lawsuit is a civil claim for money, and how long a customer has to bring one is set by a statute of limitations — a different statute, often with a different trigger, frequently a different length. Many states additionally have a statute of repose that extinguishes construction-defect claims a fixed number of years after substantial completion no matter when the defect surfaced or was discovered. A customer can be inside the board window and outside the limitations period, or the reverse. This template deliberately prints no limitations or repose period for any state; if a deadline could decide the outcome, that is a question for a lawyer licensed in that state.

Whether a published procedure must list external routes is not something a federal rule imposes on contractors generally, so treat this as a judgement call rather than a compliance box. But consider what the alternative document says. A procedure that ends at an internal appeal implies internal appeal is the end of the customer’s options, and it is not — the board takes the complaint whether or not your procedure mentions it. Naming the routes costs you nothing you were not already exposed to, and it changes how the document reads: a contractor who publishes the board’s address is visibly not afraid of the board. Some states and some contract forms do impose specific notice requirements about the board — check yours.

Whatever you can hit on a bad week. These are your commitments, not legal deadlines, and this builder never presents them as anything else. The defaults it ships — one business day to acknowledge, five to investigate, ten to resolve, ten more for an internal appeal — are common choices, not requirements. Acknowledgement is the one worth being aggressive about, because it is the only stage a customer can verify instantly and the one whose absence generates the second complaint. Resolution is the one to be honest about: a ten-business-day target you keep does more for you than a two-day target you miss on the first hard case. And a resolution the customer disagrees with is still a resolution, as long as it is written, dated and reasoned.

From the received date you enter, using your own stage targets, counting business days and skipping Saturdays and Sundays. The stages are cumulative: the investigation clock starts where acknowledgement ended and the resolution clock starts where investigation ended, which is how the work actually sequences. If the received date is blank, or is not a real date, no deadline is shown at all — the builder will not date a deadline from today or from an empty field. Public holidays are not deducted, so a week containing one runs a day tight; if that matters for a specific complaint, adjust the date by hand.

Do not build it into the deal. Under the Consumer Review Fairness Act (15 U.S.C. § 45b) a provision in a form contract is void from inception if it prohibits or restricts a customer's review, imposes a penalty or fee for leaving one, or requires them to hand over the rights in it — and offering a form contract containing such a provision is itself unlawful. The FTC and state attorneys general can enforce it whether or not the business ever acts on the threat. A freely negotiated settlement is a different legal animal from a form-contract clause, but "we will refund you if you delete the review" is exactly the pattern that draws attention, and it converts a service complaint into a consumer-protection question. This procedure states the opposite in writing: your resolution does not depend on what you say about us in public. That sentence is worth more to a nervous customer than any adjective in the document.

Stop calling. Under 47 CFR § 64.1200(a)(10) a person may revoke consent to calls and texts by any reasonable means, and the revocation must be honoured within a reasonable time not to exceed ten business days from receipt. An open complaint does not suspend that, and you cannot insist they use one particular opt-out method — a reply of STOP, END, CANCEL or "quit texting me" is a reasonable means. Switch to the channel they did agree to, or to writing only, and record that you did. This template carries the same commitment in the same terms as the dispatcher call-script template, so a business using both is consistent with itself.

Long enough that you can still prove how you responded, which in practice means at least as long as you keep the job file. The builder defaults to five years and cites why: California licensees must make and keep records of all contracts, documents, records, receipts and disbursements and have them available for inspection by the CSLB registrar for a minimum of five years after the construction project is completed (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 7111). That is a California figure, so the field is editable — your state may set a different period and some set none. The practical argument is separate from the legal one: the complaint file is the only evidence that you acknowledged, investigated and answered within the times this document promises. A board complaint filed years later against a contractor with no file is decided on the customer's account of it.

No, and every export says so. It does three narrower things. It shortens the window in which a small problem becomes an unanswerable one, because a customer who knows how to reach you and when to expect an answer waits instead of escalating. It gives you a defensible record of how you handled the case. And it makes the external routes explicit rather than letting the customer discover them at the point of maximum anger. What it is not: legal advice, a compliance product, or evidence of compliance with anything. The board windows shown were verified against primary sources on the date noted in the document and boards do change their rules — confirm yours before relying on it, and have a lawyer in your state read the version you publish.