“This call may be recorded for quality assurance and training purposes.” Yes, but can I get a copy of it? Not unless you made one yourself.

After one of our readers called customer service at a company, he really wanted a copy of it. The why is not important, but the company denied his request several times, saying “these recordings are for internal use only unfortunately, we will be unable to send you a copy of that conversation.” So our reader asked us if there was some way he could force the company to send him a copy. “Some type of “freedom of information act” [not exactly, but along those lines]???” he queried. The short answer is “nope.”

We did some checking with various lawyers and regulatory bodies and found that there’s only two instances in which you can get a company to fork up a copy of a customer service call. If you’re a victim of identity theft, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act you can get a copy of a call the fraudster made in which they conducted a transaction using your information. This is provided that the call was recorded and a copy of the recording was saved.

The other situation would be as part of discovery in a lawsuit, but neither scenario means you can just call up and get them to fork it over.

So, sorry, this call may be recorded, but it’s not for you, unless you make your own customer service call recordings at home. (My fave way to do it is Skype + Mp3CallRecorder)

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