How do ordinary consumers opt out of phone calls recorded by businesses and call centres?

This has been bugging me a bit this week again. I made calls to banks, a medical aid, and I was called again by my mobile phone company wanting to renew my contract. In every case I first hear a prerecorded message telling me, amongst other things, that my call is being recorded for ‘quality and training purposes’.

Well OK, but where is the ‘Press 1 to agree, or press 2 to opt out’? Why am I given no option at all? Yet, if I even want to install a call recording app on my phone, I am blocked from doing so. I don’t have the option to even install, and inform (request?) callers that I’m recording the call.

I have the same rights (as a corporate entity) surely to inform and record calls? If I can’t install such an app, why can a corporate get away with it?

You may be forgiven for thinking I don’t need to record my calls because after all, the business is doing it for quality purposes already on my behalf? Well, I can tell you, I did a telephonic contract renewal two years ago with a very red mobile company in South Africa. To cut a 25 minute story short, I was promised a device, which I asked a few questions about, and was given answers. Well suffice to say, what was promised, was not delivered. There was another mistruth given to me (I described it it as a lie) where I was told I would be paying Rx less than now (how can I verify that while on a phone call, and it turned out that was a mistruth). Needless to say I was quite cross about this service and made a complaint and asked them to draw the call records (because I’d recorded the call I could tell them exactly where to listen in the conversation). Well they did not seem to able/willing to find their recording to settle this ‘quality’ issue.

You may also ask how was I legally allowed to record the phone call? Well, when I hear the nice lady on the phone telling me she is recording the conversation for quality and training purposes, I always politely reply to her with a thank you, and I tell her I’m also recording the phone call for quality purposes!

So, I escalated it to their head office and sent my recording in to the red mobile phone company in South Africa and said they could listen to my recording seeing they could (would not provide a recording to me) not provide theirs. Needless to say the whole transaction was reversed and they sent a courier to collect that device. It’s not my first such run in with this company, and I’ve had a few others too (mostly with call centres). Every time, the recording has saved me as I could quote exactly what was said word by word. Not once though, has any company sent me the call recordings that I had requested.

So my question again, is how are these call recording “laws” protecting consumers from big companies? It’s the companies with the money that enable these facilities to protect themselves (and definitely not their customers). Why have I as the consumer got no right to opt out of the recordings? hat is the purpose of informing someone of the recording?

So because of this I have zero qualms about recording my phone calls with every business I interact with (my software gives the option at the end of the call whether to delete or save with notes). It is also why I usually try to use e-mail instead, as then I also have an accurate record of both sides of the interaction (what do you mean I can’t record my e-mails?).

It is also why, after doing business for at least two decades with this company, I refuse to do any more telephonic dealings with them, and I’ll be cancelling my contract when it expires in mid-May 2023.
#Blog, #callcentres, #consumerrights, #phone, #recordings, #technology