This Call May be Recorded for Public Humiliation Purposes

The nice people over at The Consumerist post that das T-Mobile forbids you to record your call to customer service, even though they reserve the right to record the call themselves. While it's not illegal for T-Mobile to set such a policy, I have to wonder if anyone over there actually thought it through. Doesn't such a policy amount to telling their paying customers "Sooner or later we're going to screw you, and when we do, we don't want any pesky recordings running around to prove your side of the story?"

Do companies like T-Mobile not understand that the relationship between customer and vendor is kept alive only through trust? Doesn't this kind of policy just tell the consumer that T-Mobile wants to screw them and doesn't want to get caught doing it?

Further, the relationship between, say, an individual consumer and a cellular company is a contract. A contract is an agreement between two parties to exchange something of value. In this case, the individual agrees to give money to the cellular company in exchange for cellular service. While the perceived value of the service is comprised of several factors, it especially includes the ability to call customer service if there's a problem (and, of course, for customer service to be willing and able to fix the problem.) Therefore, if customer service quality is perceived to be poor, the perceived value of the cellular service is reduced, and the individual may (and probably should) take their business elsewhere.

Note the use of the word "perceived". I'm sure someone over at T-Mobile understands that customer retention is wholly reliant on the perceived value of their service, but that person and the jerk who set the aforementioned policy don't appear to talk much.

Unintelligble rants aside, remember that it's totally legal to record your phone calls, and you don't even have to tell the other party unless they're in the same state you are, and that state happens to have such a law. From a follow-up post on The Consumerist:

It's totally legal to record conversations across state lines and you don't have to tell the company at all.

This right is granted specifically by Federal statute 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2511(2)(d).

Now, if the call center is in your state, you will have to notify them, but only if you're in one of these states: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Washington.

Mostly, calls to companies are interstate. You can secretly record to your heart's delight.

Via The Consumerist, from whom I also shamelessly swiped the Mr. T Mobile image, 'cause it's super sweet.

Please note that neither this post, nor any content on this blog constitutes a legal opinion or legal advice. I'm not an attorney, just someone who takes the hard work of others, shakes well with self-centered raving and a dash of vitriol, then pours it on an unsuspecting blogosphere.