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This Call May Be Monitored ...

Posted by michael on from the important-to-us dept.

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."

6 of 443 comments (clear)

  1. Turn it to your advantage by fembots · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  2. Re:Here We Go Again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I'd like to tell their stupid machine that I'm recording their call; and keep the record for when I need to complain to their management about poor customer support.

    I assume if I tell their on-hold-music-machine "I'm recording your call too" that would be OK.

  3. It's true by paranode · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I interviewed for a phone support job a few years ago when I was a college student. Before I even talked to the interviewer, they took me to the floor and hooked me up to listen with a support rep. This was a bank, I won't say which one. I listened to account numbers, socials, you name it. I wasn't even an employee. I didn't end up getting the job, either (though I was sort of glad after hearing the irate customers for ten minutes).

    And yeah, they can hear you on hold, so do be careful.

  4. Re:Big Brother? Not quite... by tomhudson · · Score: 3, Interesting
    however I'll keep my finger near the mute button
    Have you tested yuor mute button - a LOT of phones, if you listen carefully, you can still hear someone who's pressed their MUTE button - it doesn't completely cut off the sound.
  5. Use it to your advantage by Teppy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!

  6. Re:Advice for calling Tech Support/Customer Servic by CmdrGravy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.