Here in Florida both parties must give permission to record a telephone call. If the called parties initial greeting states: "This call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance purposes." Then by continuing the call the caller has granted the right to the called party to record the conversation, it also gives the caller the right to record the call without further notice. The caller has a right to ask the customer service representative not to record the call but no one ever does.
This matter came up in the late 90's when a CSR of a competitive ISP gave a customer incorrect instructions on how to install their Netscape Navigator browser. As a result of the CSR's incompetence the customers operating system was completely corrupted. The customer sued the ISP to recover the cost to have the computer repaired. The ISP's management claimed that the call was recorded by the customer illegally.
The ISP lost because the customer recorded the entire call which included the touch tone number they dialed and the initial announcement that that the call may be recorded by the ISP. The position of the court was that denying the caller the right to record the call was the same as if the ISP asked the caller to sign a contract and then refuse to give them a copy of the contract they just signed. The ISP had to pay the customers repair cost which at the time was several hundred dollars.
Wait a moment.. what if the caller had set the phone down and didn't here the message about recording? I know that if I started telling things to "customer service" after I called, probably nobody heard me. Maybe they recorded it, though
reply to Mr Matt Thanks for the information. I'm in Florida and I have been given some bad information in the past from the cable company. I'm definitely going to see about recording all future calls going forward.
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