social awareness guide #4: this call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes...

When Vincent Ferrari tried to cancel his account, he met with the customer representative from hell. Good thing he decided to record the conversation and post it on YouTube (see below), creating great embarassment for AOL. (If you search for AOL on YouTube, this is the first thing that pops up.)

While Vincent's experience may be extreme, many of us have tried calling customer representative or tech support before and encountered our own share of hilarious and/or annoying frustrations. My suggestion is: every time you want to call customer service, record the conversation. Whether you decide to post it on YouTube or keep it for your records, that's up to you, but you never know what it could be good for. Sometimes the people who answer your call don't always record the conversation. I imagine that they must be sitting at a computer that has predetermined codes or boxes that they fill, and that they are given limited authorization to make changes. (E.g. Toshiba had extended my warranty for a year but it never shows up on my account when I call until I remind them.)

I'm not sure if recording and publishing these calls are any violation of any law so I don't want to encourage people to do that until you and I find out more. I don't think Vincent got in any particular trouble, and if it was a legitimate grievance, the company might be too embarassed to sue. Plus, even if you retract the video, given the power of the Internet, many others would've re-posted it.

So, make sure when you hear the automated recording say "This call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes...", that you do the same.