Recording of telephone conversation with permission

melb

hi there I am seeing conflicting things online. We rang a company to come to look at and fix an electrical appliance.  We are disputing the overinflated bill.  He says he has proof of us agreeing to his rates as he recorded the telephone call.

We know that his claims are nonsense and look forward to hearing it, but is it legal for a business to record a conversation with an individual without informing them beforehand?  

melb

sorry that should be without permission I do not know how to edit my first post

Bradden

Possibly not... they also might not be registered to store such data - however in this case it's a bonus as his recording will prove him wrong.

Manxman_in_exile

I'm not 100% certain that they need your permission to record a 'phone converstaion that you are both taking part in.  What's the difference between that and taking a verbatim note of the conversation?  Do you need to be registered to take a note of a conversation?

If they were recording a conversation they weren't party to, I think that may well be a criminal offence?

user1977

It's a bit academic if you're certain that there's no such recording anyway. You can invite him to submit his evidence as part of his case if he pursues you for payment.

Sandtree

As long as they are compliant with all the GDPR considerations with storage, security, notices etc then in principle its fine but ultimately if it went to court it would be for the judge to decide if its admissible as evidence or what weight is to be given to it.

In a recent project we were legally required to submit transcripts of all call recordings to the courts and whilst the inbound callers do receive a recorded message to say they are being recorded before the agent comes on it is not part of the standard script for the outbound agents to mention call recording. Certainly in that court case no one raised the lack of a message on the circa 10% of calls that were outbound and we had some fairly vocal opponents looking for any technicalities to get the case thrown out (even challenging the right of the COO to have signed the notice letter sent due to the fact he was not legally an employee or statutory director of the company)

Having worked in call centres for a decade before escaping the one thing I can say upon listening to a call recording is that generally neither the agent nor the customer remember 100% correctly exactly what was said. Thats indeed one of the key reasons that companies need to record calls as agent's notes after the call can be erroneous, even if unintentionally. 

melb

thanks for the replies.  If the recording exists and he passes it on to a debt collection agency which he is threatening to do even though the invoice was only sent a week ago, presumably that would infringe on GDPR rules?

emmajones1976

melb said:

thanks for the replies.  If the recording exists and he passes it on to a debt collection agency which he is threatening to do even though the invoice was only sent a week ago, presumably that would infringe on GDPR rules?

Sounds like he is all bluster tbh, this is all a tactic to get you to pay up.

Call his bluff. He cant just "pass it on to a debt collector". By all means he can take you through the small claims system once he has issued you a final Letter Before Action and given you a reasonable time period to pay, but he would have to produce all evidence before it got anywhere near a judge.

user1977

melb said:

thanks for the replies.  If the recording exists and he passes it on to a debt collection agency which he is threatening to do even though the invoice was only sent a week ago, presumably that would infringe on GDPR rules?

Why would the debt collection agency want a recording of the call? They just chase whatever they're told the debt is.

Sandtree

melb said:

thanks for the replies.  If the recording exists and he passes it on to a debt collection agency which he is threatening to do even though the invoice was only sent a week ago, presumably that would infringe on GDPR rules?

Not necessarily, first you need to know if it contains information that can identify you (it presumably does), secondly you need to read their privacy notice and finally you would need to know on what grounds the data was shared. There is potential for legitimate business need.

GDPR cannot be used to simply tie up business and allow non-payers to get away with it etc... another long discussion with the data privacy experts thankfully quickly resolved by the lawyers when the law requires certain information to be shared to sell a book of FS business but your data privacy notice has never contemplated that you may do so. 

melb

thanks for further replies.  So do you have to go through some legal process before you can instruct a debt collector?  We have had a flurry of emails from him today one of which made us think he was going to pass all information to them.  As soon as we received his invoice with 'payment due on receipt of invoice' and 'late payment charges will be incurred after 3 days' we feared he was a bully.  We have sent him a well considered sum of money for the work carried out and expect a further flurry of activity this evening