Customer takes Bell to court and wins
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
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.
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.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appstar.ca...
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 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.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1441643
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws#Unite...
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.
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)
Depends on the content and the information stored alongside it, the medium is irrelevant.
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.
This was our policy when I was doing tech support and I enforced it a small handful of times.
I tried jailbreaking my iPhone a couple times specifically for that feature, but the apps were lame.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The judgment against them was $1,110; how high do you think they should have gone with the settlement offer?
The question isn't what he has to gain, it is what they stood to lose.
(1 - P) * 1110 + (cost of additional legal fees)
Where P is Bell's probability of winning.
David Ramsay, the guy who sued Bell over this, is my kind of lunatic. Huzzah! Thanks, David, for being unreasonable.
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.
>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.
For practical purposes, the entire contract usually is in writing.
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)
In the US I generally have good luck with “pushing back” on corporations after having made verbal agreements with customer service, but not always.
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.
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.
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.
It's nothing but ugly and slimy bullshit.
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.