>> In a move that was pivotal to his legal case, he requested a transcript of the call
I take advantage of the fact that the companies who seem to be the most frustrating to deal with, are courteous enough to begin each phone call stating that "calls may be recorded." I have a call recording app on my phone and on at least 3 occasions I have had a company immediately escalate a phone call to a person who immediately fixed the problem when I offered to replay a previous phone call back to them. That app probably has the highest value-to-cost ratio of any app on my phone.
edit: I should add that depending on the state, you may be allowed to record simply by virtue of the fact that you are a party to the conversation. Some states do require consent from all parties and how this applies across state lines is poorly defined. That's why I like it when companies tell me they're recording - then I have a green light. Funnily, Verizon once called me, told me they were recording, and then hung up when I said I was too.
I've had the same experience though I don't use a special app, just regular audio recorder, as the phone I'm using for the call isn't my mobile. On every occasion that I've mentioned having a recording of terms distinct from what is actually being provided/charged I've received immediate escalation and resolution.
The funniest was with an ISP (who shall remain nameless) who claimed that they didn't have access to their copy of the previous conversation and thus couldn't confirm or honor the supposedly offered price. Once I mentioned that I had a recording the call resolved in about 1.5 minutes.
Many companies' CSRs are under strict instructions to hang up if they ever get so much as a hint that the conversation may be recorded.
I find it utterly disgusting. Online chats, emails etc will always be recorded, why are companies so scared of their phone support being recorded?
I hope at some point we get regulation requiring companies to share recorded phonecalls with their customers when they demand it. (I'm not entirely certain GDPR covers phone calls. Maybe someone knows)
Shouldn't the voice be personal identifiable information? Just as a picture is.
They could of course store a machine translated transcript instead (assuming no personally identifiable information is uttered (though almost always there is, the customer is expected to give a customer ID or something)).
Also, considering how bad computers are at understanding spoken words the usefulness would be debatable depending on context.
It's not really a basic feature. The sandboxing of iOS apps is smart in many ways. Allowing 3rd party access to an native Apple app could open up problems.
But there's a good reason for that -- as long as legislatures keep making it ILLEGAL to use such a feature, can you really blame Apple for not wanting to offer it?
In some states ("multi-party consent" states), it is illegal to use the feature without the consent of the person being recorded; just like in some situations it is illegal to use the "camera" feature without the consent of the person being recorded. That doesn't stop Apple for offering a camera on their phone.
Other states have "one-party consent" laws that mean it is always legal for you to record own phone calls.
> That's why I like it when companies tell me they're recording - then I have a green light.
I'm not sure them having permission to record implies you also having permission to record in all-party-consent states. I would appreciate a source stating otherwise.
If it is a two party starts, and they are recording... That means they have given their permission to record. Therefore you can record. By saying they are recording they are giving implied consent (otherwise they wouldn't be able to record)
No - they can't escape the literal meaning of the words. "May I use your restroom?" "Yes, you may use the restroom." Meaning is clear. "This call may be recorded." I'm sorry, that's consent. If they want to argue that their intent is otherwise once I produce my recording that's up to them, but by the literal meaning of their words in the English language they have definitely granted consent.
And as a side note, all of my recordings include me stating on the call that I am also recording. They don't hear me because it's a machine, but they used a machine to get my consent and assume I gave it because I remain on the line, but they also remain on the line after stating it's being recorded. They really have no leg to stand on if they want to fight me on it.
There's nothing to buy. This is the kind of mental olympics a judge would have to go to to give me jail time over this:
1. Decide that a phone-call with me, who lives in a one-party consent state, must be governed by the laws of the all-party consent state the company, who recorded the call themselves, is based in. I'm aware of no precedent even close to this. But wait! There's more!
2. Decide that a person can consent to keep their own recording, but not consent to others keeping their own recording, all implicitly.
3. Decide that an automated machine is sufficient to get my consent, but not the consent of the owner of the machine that's actually doing what they will claim they're not consenting to.
4. Decide that words that literally grant consent are not consent, or that me holding them to their word is not literally fulfilling the stated purpose of improving their customer service.
5. Deal with the fact that I will gladly be found in contempt of court telling the judge to go fuck his or her respective self trying to get media coverage of this stupid decision.
I would've assumed that the company stating that the conversation would be recorded would already be their implied consent to all parties of the conversation recording it...but assumptions and law don't go well together.
Yes. If they are recording, then they've given their consent to be recorded. There is no "I gave consent to be recorded by me but not by the other party"
I really miss the recording app I had on my Treo. Insanely useful, especially since I miss things in verbal conversations a lot, and it was handy to be able to go back to.
I tried jailbreaking my iPhone a couple times specifically for that feature, but the apps were lame.
What phone / app do you use? I've wanted this feature since forever. I just tried installing a few high rated android apps on my new android phone and so far nothing records my counterparts side of the conversation.
I'm guessing companies will eventually change the message to say that they're recording, and place their call center in a two party state, so you have to request their permission to record on your end (which they will decline).
Would they have to wait for the customer to likewise consent -- would their recording not be an implicit consent?
Even in the two-party states, I would be surprised to find a judge or prosecutor who would allow a claim against a customer recording a call that was also recorded by the company. Even if technically violating the letter of the law. But cases like these have surprised me before.
Does the law say I have to give notice when I think there's an actual human on the other end, or can I give notice when the robot pauses? The robot isn't verifying that there's an actual human on my end.
The specific laws I'm familiar with don't reference consent to each specific recording, they reference consent for it to be recorded in general terms. Unless the law changed I wouldn't bother myself with it.
Mine is called "Call Recorder - ACR" on Google Play. I've had that same problem before - the Android permissions relevant to this type of app have changed through various versions and on different phones - there's a different combination of settings you need depending on your device - they have a help page about it that I had to play around with before I got it to work again after an upgrade.
edit: If you have a good poker face it may not matter - I've had a company push back a little further but eventually cave before I actually sent them the MP3, but only once has anyone actually heard any of the recording before they changed their tune.
I definitely second ACR. I use it and have it set up to record literally every phone call I make or receive. (You might need to be mindful of espionage laws depending on where you live, as some states/countries might require consent from both parties.)
I'd strongly suggest everyone record their phone calls with any kind of company or business, especially larger corporations. It's a good way to make sure they can't renege once they've promised you something.
Not sure if it's the same as OP's, but it works for me!
That's the free version, good enough for most purposes and certainly for testing. But they have a paid version with some features that are nice for business use if you need that.
For Android, I use skvalex call recorder. It costs $10, which is "relatively" expensive for Android apps, but it's worth it. I bought it years ago and it has been recording my calls ever since. Other call recording apps were either spyware/adware traps or were just terrible.
For me, no other call recording app worked because of the hardware I had. Some phones make call recording easy and some make it nearly impossible. I hear that recent phones are much better than phones from two or more years ago.
Some of the features that make the skvalex app better than anything else I tried are automatic recording all the time, detailed recording meta info, automatic file encryption, automatic recording cleanup, and I find the UI design to be utility oriented, which is a good thing.
Note that previous versions of the app were removed from the Google Play Store because they used prohibited methods to record calls on devices that don't have official call recording APIs. The new app is labeled as a beta/test, but it's very stable.
Note that if your phone doesn't work with the app in the Google Play Store, you need to install the CallRecorderROOT apk module, which you can only get from the XDA forum post. You don't need the CallRecorderROOT apk if your phone works with the standard API, which many do these days.
Finally, using this app has paid off immensely. There are a couple of particular vendors I work with (Notably Cisco Systems) that have fking awful support, and I've dug out recordings of their terrible phone support calls and put it in front of our reps in group meetings. Being able to put the embarrassing behavior of their support reps in front of them gets an immediate attitude adjustment, and in my case, our support tier was bumped up to top-tier status and I've never had a problematic call since. Yes, depending on how much you pay or how big a customer you are determines which group of phone droids your call gets routed to.
There are universal apps that route a call through a data center that records the call for you. Don't remember the names but they work on iOS as well as Android.
Monthly or usage fees for use. And you don't even need the app -- can use a web interface as well. But I would guess you have to originate the call.
"Before they got to court, Bell offered Ramsay money to drop the case — $300, roughly the amount Ramsay estimated the telecom would be over-billing him for two years. He declined."
HA!
"Three weeks before the court date, Bell contacted Ramsay again. He was offered $1,000 to settle, but was required to sign a confidentiality agreement. Again, Ramsay declined."
<sarc>Wow, big spenders! They'll spare no expense! They'll stop at nothing! Would they have gone as high as $1,010? $1,050?!?!</sarc>
It's almost insulting. Good for this guy. If anyone wants to buy the abridgement of your free speech I hope you'll at least demand appropriate compensation. And I hope if anyone approaches me with that kind of offer, they'll at least have the courtesy not to insult me.
George Bernard Shaw wrote: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
David Ramsay, the guy who sued Bell over this, is my kind of lunatic. Huzzah! Thanks, David, for being unreasonable.
Maybe in the other 9 instances that this happened before 1000 worked. Lawyers are not hiqh-quality PR people who understand that today the smallest thing can blow up in a multi-million dollar problem.
In most cases, they have very little.
I may hate Comcast, but if I have the misfortune of moving into a place and they're the only game in town, it's basically tough luck. Could rant and rave all day about how terrible everything is, but I have to have internet for work either way.
The second offer included a "confidentiality agreement", which I would associate a large negative value with, personally. So the court's judgement was significantly higher than what the company wanted to settle for.
All crooks. As a Canadian, it's a shame that so many choose to just accept circumstances regarding Telecoms and other companies. We get royally screwed and no one seems to care. I'm so glad I decided to cut my contract with my phone company two years ago.
And the big 3 keep pushing. All pushing up fees for internet, cable, etc in lockstep. Lying on contracts, using misleading advertising for initial terms, not following guidelines or laws. None of them offering truly competitive rates. The agencies that are meant to handle complaints and regulations do so half-heartedly. It's bad when my phone bill dominates my monthly expenses, second only to rent.
Well, only in Saskatchewan, I think. I'm not sure if there are other telecom crown corporations that can give you a regal treatment. I don't think Bell was ever a crown corp, but parts of it may have been before they bought them.
I was dumbfounded when Canadians told me not only they were still paying for a thing called "long distance", but their cell phones charged for out-of-province calls!
As a Canadian it makes me elated to see one of our big broadcasting oligopolies take a hit. What caught my eye was :
>Undeterred, Ramsay filed a complaint with the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (the CCTS), a moderator between customers and telecom providers.
>In a lengthy email exchange, a spokesperson for the CCTS insisted that Bell had the right to increase prices and since the telecom had notified Ramsay of this fact — as well as an upcoming price increase — it ruled that the telecom provider met its obligations and no further investigation was warranted.
CCTS is a part of hte CRTC here in Canada which is a government institution that's supposed to regulate broadcasting and telecom in order to protect Canadian customers. In recent years, they've helped broadcasters fix prices by having them meet and agree on base prices. They've also made prices more expensive for Canadians by working to keep out foreign competition and limit internal competition.
In the one instance where it was asked to actually protect a customer against clearly illegal behavior - they didn't seem to care at all, demonstrating that the CTRC is a taxpayer funded entity here to help the telecom giants and not the taxpayers who fund them.
After referring to the "verbal" contract for most of the article, it finally gets to the "oral" contract. All contracts are verbal; some are oral. Only a few contracts must be written, such as those under the "statute of frauds", e.g. real estate contracts.
Even when falling under SOF, the entire contract need not be in writing. Only confirmation of the existence of the contract need be in writing provided that the verbally agreed terms can be verified (here through the transcript).
For practical purposes, the entire contract usually is in writing.
A non-starter. The US company would have mandatory binding arbitration with a no class action clause in the contract noone pays attention to when they get the service. The arbitration details are secret. You would never know what others have attempted in the same argument against a similar US company. US company would, of course, know all the past attempts against them and know best how to argue.
As the arbiters may be blacklisted by the US company for ruling against them, they tend to bias to ones that favor the corporation against the human being.
In Corporate Ruled America, he'd have never received his "day in court". You do not get to use courts of law against a corporation in the US.
Could actually go pretty well, especially if picked up as a class action by a law firm expert in that area.
It is exactly the kind of systemic unfairness that the class actions are designed to handle -- too small individually to typically prosecute, but enormous in aggregate.
That said, legislation constraining class actions and terms requiring arbitration, etc. are setup as obstacles, and could be effective roadblocks. However since this was a deal before the contract with the fine print demanding arbitration, it might work (std IANAL caveat)
Possibly the same way. Both countries have the same common law traditions.
But I'm surprised that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_frauds did not come into play. This was a well-documented verbal contract, but still it was a verbal contract for 24 months. Which is more than a year, and therefore is more than a verbal contract should be able to cover.
That is why the comment that it would be memorialized in writing was important to the case. The idea being that the writing was enough confirmation of the existence of the verbal contract, irregardless that it contradicted a key point. The key point (no price increases) was confirmed to be part of the verbal contract by the transcript.
In essence you have satisfied SOF by the email and satisfied meeting of the minds on key contractual points (term, price, level of service) through the transcript.
For what it's worth, when chatting with rogers (the other major canadian telecom provider) today about plan change, they explicitly stated their offer guarantees a "discount for the term" but the "rate is not protected" ..
Tip for Canadian consumers: ALL OF CANADA is a one party consent jurisdiction for phone and conversation recording. Not like the US where law varies state by state. If you run your own VoIP system or otherwise set up call recording on your own phone, you are fine to record and store whatever you want without informing the other party.
It sounds like I’m this case the sales person said an incorrect price (either on accident or deliberate sales person scummy behavior), so this does seem completely reasonable and good? The alternative seems worse
The sales person over-promised in order to land the sale and Bell tried to retroactively modify the terms of the contract (pricing). Hopefully this causes CSRs to cut that shit out and be more upfront about pricing.
The law is fairly smart. It is flexible enough to recognize the difference between a simple clerical error or misstatement and an intentional deception.
In this case, OP provides plenty of evidence that this would be a case of intentional deception. Contract law as implemented in most US states says that clerical errors are presumed to be correctable while intentional deception may either invalidate the contract or allow it to be enforced as originally stated.
I take advantage of the fact that the companies who seem to be the most frustrating to deal with, are courteous enough to begin each phone call stating that "calls may be recorded." I have a call recording app on my phone and on at least 3 occasions I have had a company immediately escalate a phone call to a person who immediately fixed the problem when I offered to replay a previous phone call back to them. That app probably has the highest value-to-cost ratio of any app on my phone.
edit: I should add that depending on the state, you may be allowed to record simply by virtue of the fact that you are a party to the conversation. Some states do require consent from all parties and how this applies across state lines is poorly defined. That's why I like it when companies tell me they're recording - then I have a green light. Funnily, Verizon once called me, told me they were recording, and then hung up when I said I was too.