Slashdot Mirror
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.
What part of "This call may be monitored" did you not understand?
I always loved telling people they were on hold and listening to them for a while... People seem to lose all sense of reality when you tell them they are on hold.. Some of the names you get called are quite.... entertaining.
"Carpe Noctem"
This call may be monitored or recorded? Ok thanks, I'll just hit record now then.. thank you for your permission.
No todo lo que es oro brilla
Dammit... that was my first date this millenium, too. No wonder she told me off when I called!
I hope someone was listening the time I administered the Turing test to a female synthetic-voice / voice-recognition self-help system, in the form of an attempt to solicit phone sex... (Telus customer assistance robot: 1-800-400-2598)
As a former phone customer service person, and phone tech support person, Id like to let everyone know to STFU when you are placed on hold. If you don't hear hold music, (and sometimes even if you do) the phone tech has put you on mute while while he/she curses the series of life events that led him/her to have to *try* to help you (and/or just researches the issue). The phone tech can hear what you are saying, and one thing we are not fond of is people talking thrash about the tech support. This may lead to you not being helped out.
A general rule of thumb is that the nicer and more reasonable you are on the phone, the better the quality of support you will receive, and the faster you will be off the phone with your problem solved. Its fucked, but thats reality. Also, most call logging systems have a section for "Technician comments", which can be anything from "customer follows directions well" to "customer is an asshole". This can influence greatly the way you are treated by future technicians. Sometimes I've escalated calls for a callback (in 1-2 days for one company I worked at) just because I won't deal with a rude fuck. At one company, this was unoffical policy.
And, as always, my question is this: how is it that this is related to my rights online when I call up a remote location, with no idea what's on the other end, and my call is recorded when I speak INTO THE PHONE *after* I'm told it might be recorded?
Perhaps if you RTFA you'll see that the issues are more complex than this. For me, two parts of the article that disturbed me are
1) That the monitoring itself even captures what you say while on hold. Despite the 'please hold' and you listen to music, they are recording what you say. That was a reminder for me. I kinda thought the monitoring would be done while you were communicating with someone, not while listening to muzak. I wonder how many times they have heard me say 'If you are so concerned about your customer, don't make me wait on hold' or perhaps 'Thanks for my patience? Do I have a f'in choice?'
2) The monitoring itself is being outsource. Third parties, sometimes in other countries, are listening in when the rep asks you for you account number, mothers maiden name, etc. Thats a privacy issue about how my data is protected/not protected.
I think you are focusing on the wrong parts of the article.
As far as how does this relate to online? Hmm, its a stretch, more about affects of technology. TFA does mention VOIP.
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!
One time I was on hold with some customer service guy, I turned to my friend and said, "omg this guy sounds like he's 12 years old". The guy came back on the line and said, "I heard that you know."
pwned.