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This Call May Be Monitored ...
Iphtashu Fitz writes "We've all heard it. The recorded message when you call technical support or your bank or credit card company: 'This call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes.' But has it ever occurred to you that people actually DO listen in? Approximately 2 percent of these calls are listened to either live or after the fact, and it may come as a surprise that Big Brother even listens to what you may say while you are on hold. The people who monitor these calls routinely hear arguments between spouses or parents and children, people yelling at pets, and all sorts of other domestic disputes."
Just pretend talking to your friend while on hold, discussing the option to switch to another competitor "if this call doesn't solve my problems", that might get you something.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
I assume if I tell their on-hold-music-machine "I'm recording your call too" that would be OK.
Tele ___insert occupation here___ get very upset when you offer to record them. THey just stop dead in their tracks and wait... They are not really much fun..
"Carpe Noctem"
Dear Michael,
You got served.
Yours truely,
Anonymous Coward
And yeah, they can hear you on hold, so do be careful.
Well my question is if these people say hear arguments, death threats and what not and now someone gets murdered, should they be held liable because they knew something could happen but didn't act upon it?
Of course they won't be but all I'm saying if you are gonna eavesdrop, you should take ALL responsibilities that come along with it....
I used to work tech support for a major ISP back when I was in highschool and our calls where monitored as well. The calls were mostly monitored in order to insure proper instructions support were provided...BUT...there where notes and logs of each transaction taken and *Very Often* there were notes and warnings about horrible and abusive clients. Not that any frequent /.'er would ever call tech support.
...and it really was for quality assurance purposes. When I trained be a customer service rep for CoreStates bank, they would have you tap into various reps phone calls and listen-in to learn how the job gets done. Sometimes you would even physically sit next to that rep and listen-in, unbeknownst to the customer. The supervisors would also listen in to random calls to make sure everyone is being friendly, helpful, etc.
Call monitoring is a quality control function of the customer service department of the company you do business with, not the CIA/FBI/NRO/Freemasons.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I work at a support center (one where there is no punch menu system other than "if you wish to leave a voice mail" [and get ignored[) and this is very important for us as if a customer flies off the handle we can record it...and then threaten to cut the customer off internet until he behaves nice.
Other than that, mostly it is employee review, etc.
RoundTop
I guess "supporting the troops" has been redefined by conservatives as "sending troops into battle without sufficient manpower or equipment under pretense while lowering their combat pay and family benefits and forcing them to stay indefinately and all this while keeping one's head firmly placed in one's butt about the potential that some people in Iraq might not like us being there."
If this is SUPPORTING the troops, I find it hard to believe that Kerry/Edwards could have done worse, other than randomly selecting some military personnel and personally killing them on primetime television. Or maybe I just missed my govt-sponsored ration of logic-altering substance today.
One:
When I'm on hold, and can't hear them, I have an expectation that they can't hear me, because that is how 99% of phones work when you press the hold button. And there's no reason they should be recording stuff when on hold and I'm not talking to their guy.
Two:
"The call may be monitored." is NOT the same thing as "This call may be RECORDED." If I hear that the call may be monitored I have always assumed that meant that someone might be listening in on the call AT THAT MOMENT. And monitoring != recording.
I agree, michael is once again being a socialist prick. If he had actually read the frickin' article he'd also notice this gem:
/. soon, just like Katz.
Recently, Pike stumbled onto a call where a young male customer was flirting with a female service agent at a cell phone company. After some giggles and banter, the woman relented and gave her personal phone number to the customer. Pike quickly alerted the cell phone company to the phone date.
Notice here that the phone monitor dude, Pike, is not calling the cell phone company to go get that evil customer. No. He's calling to tell the cell phone company that they have a representative of their company setting up a date with a customer. This obviously puts the company in a sticky situation since they're most likely NOT in the business of being a match-making service, and this kind of behavior is almost certainly NOT allowed on "company time."
And I have listened to these monitored calls. Being the evil Big Brother that I am, I can tell you that not once have I even cared how the customer acted or behaved. All we're concerned about is how well did our agents handle the customer's question, complaint, or problem. More often than not we see agents not doing the right thing, just like the article mentioned. I truly do not see how this story relates to "My Rights Online" AT ALL!
I hope michael gets sick and tired of our berating his pathetic trolling and leaves
So yes, you may record the call without telling them since they just give you the consent.
Actually you don't have to, at least not in Pennsylvania. If both parties know the call may be recorded it's perfectly legal to record it. Of course they never expect *you* to record the call.
I bought a handy device to do just that, and it's already paid for itself: I foolishly signed up with what turned out to be a fly-by-night phone company. Our phone lines would cut out every morning for between 5 and 20 minutes - no outgoing calls, and incoming calls would receive a message saying "could not be completed as dialed."
I reported the problem to them many times, and they could never fix it, so I tried to cancel the service. They refused, claiming the contract hadn't been fulfilled. So I switched to the old phone company and all was fine with the service.
A couple months later I get a letter from a lawyer demanding $1200 for the cancelled contract. I played the totally legal recordings (after all, they said "this call may be monitored or recorded") back of me reporting the shitty service to their techs, and voila, the lawyer went away!
In Illinois it's illegal to eavesdrop on your own conversation...
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
That action led to this particular guy's firing. He was a typical arrogant MCSE who's shit was ice cream and nobody could tell him anything he didn't already know - unless it was wrong and he would certainly let them know without hesitation.
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I use to work at a call center, and the funny calls where passed around the office and played for everyones enjoyment. And you really do here all sorts of crap, when I use to place people on "hold" when working on my computer I would just use the mute button, the best is when they say how much they hate your company or ask how much the competion was again, even though you are solving there problem. I had one of call me some choice words, I just un muted and said how all that was very interesting, and how I didn't know I liked to yeah to fuck goats. Good times.
This varies state-by-state. Some states are One-Party Notify, some states are Two-Party Notify.
Generally, the legal limitation is on the party doing the recording, not explicitly either the calling or called party. No, I don't know if this is a limit based on where the company is incorporated, or where the phone support personnel are located. 3rd party and Offshore phone support probably make this all kinds of complicated.
This makes for some fun little interactions. For instance, when Maryland (a 2-party notify state) cops want to record someone they are calling on the phone, they drive over the state line into Virginia (a 1-party notify state), make their phone call, record it without notifying the call recipient, and have a legal recording of a phone call that they could not have made in the state whose laws they are enforcing.
Of course, IANAL, and this is not legal advice. Just be aware.
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So why exactly are they listening in, when they could instead be responding to my actual question? Is that why I'm spending so much time on hold? No, I didn't RTFA. I just thought I'd read /. while I'm waiting for the f'ing tech support to come back.
That's why I make it my prerogative to say as many stupid or weird things into the phone while i'm on hold... or sing crappy songs (badly i might add) JUST in case someone might be listening on the other end. As soon as someone picks up, I'm back to being normal and polite so i usually know if the person answering heard me before taking the call (when they've been listening, they're thrown off to hear me speak normally).
My ISP even has a neato feature where they get you through to a person instead of their Answertron 2000 if you swear loudly while on hold. It's just much faster than waiting for the slowpoke machine voice to speak out it's menu.
If I hadn't already posted I would have modded up that up because it's absolutley correct.
I have worked in various kinds of tech support for 6 years and it's just simple human nature; if people are nice to you - polite and helpful you are much more likely to be the same with them.
Whenever anyone in the office got a call from a particulary abusive, annoying or arrogant customer they would make sure everyone got the name so regular callers did get very definite widespread reputations.
People who were constantly annoying got a pretty awful service from us since no one saw any reason to help those people whilst people who were polite and helpful would have everyone going out of their way to be helpful to them - they could even have the odd tantrum but we'd understand because usually they would apologise afterwards - unlike the assholes.
Just remember it costs you nothing to be polite to people and you will always be able to find out a lot more about what is happening with your query if you are polite than if you spend your time cursing the person you are talking to, their company and life in general.
I always try to curse out the company I'm holding for while I'm on hold. It's really satisfying to know that someone might actually get to hear this negative feedback - because Service Sucks these days. Considering the fact that the US has moved to a 'service economy', this is a really bad thing.
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This reminds me of the time I called my ISP to have them fix the perpetually increasing ping on my connection.
I requested a credit to my account as I was not able to use the connection for what I ordered the service for: Playing games! [read: surfing porn]
The person on the other end of the phone put me on "hold/mute" while I was running their "tests". He proceeds to start making fun of my request for a credit and blah, blah, blah to his co-workers. I heard every word of what he said and when he came back to the line I asked him if he thought it was funny. He replied with, "No, sir why?" I said, "Next time, you might want to test your mute button to make sure it works before making comments to your co-workers about customers currently on the phone with you."
He sheepishly replied, "I'm sorry, sir. You should have a $20 credit on your next statement."
Notifying someone is mostly a courtesy, but can be used to imply consent.
When I worked in a call center, most of the reps there (myself included) would mute the line, rather than put a customer on hold. I figured it's because they kept call stats, and reps with lots of hold time were spoken to. Regardless, everyone who used mute instead still asked the customer to hold. You'd be surprised the things that you can hear when a customer thinks that no one is listening. As strange as it is, lots of times what you heard would be a tip on what they were actually trying to get, that they wouldn't tell you when you're on the line, so you could actually help them better than if you hadn't heard their 'hold' comments.
Of course, if the comments were them admiting they were wrong to someone nearby, 'better' doesn't necessarily mean in their favor...
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Sigh... If only. Modding would be so much more fun.