Recording sales calls - legal or not?

Looking for some opinions to settle an argument/debate.

A friend and I were discussing these accursed sales calls that everyone (apart from Saracen with his magic box) gets these days. Invariably during the course of the "spiel" your sales person will trot out the line "and this call is being recorded for training and monitoring purposes".

I was under the impression that you had to give your permission for the call to continue, and if you stated that you didn't give your permission then the sales person had to end the call.

My friend, on the other hand, says that this isn't correct and that the sales company is fully entitled to record the call that they're making to you. They just can't give that recording to anyone else.

I'm kind of hoping that I'm right - mainly because it's a great tactic to throw the slick suits off of their game. Although I did have one hard-a** who when I said I wasn't wanting the call recorded said "tough, it's company policy". Although I've no idea how he dealt with me then putting the phone down!

I understand they can record it, but they MUST inform you of this fact, upon which you can choose whether to proceed or not.
The choice will likely be yours, though, as the caller will probably not be able to switch the recorder off... in which case, if you don't want to be recorded you just hang up.

I don't know if, in the case of you phoning them, you can request a non-recorded line or something, though...

Legal provided they tell you. The recording is subject to the provisions of the DPA though. So if it for security and training purposes, that is all they can legally use it for.

I have Truecall so it's amusing when you turn the book on them and say you're recording the call for customer service improvements. In short, they don't like it even though their own system records calls.

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Originally Posted by Top_gun

I have Truecall so it's amusing when you turn the book on them and say you're recording the call for customer service improvements. In short, they don't like it even though their own system records calls.

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Another "magic box" user. ;) :D