Can Bank's Call Centres edit their recorded phonecalls?

quizmaster83

An issue I had with my bank has recently being registered by the Financial Ombudsman and will soon be adjudicated. The customer service reps were completely in the wrong and made several offers which they didn't follow through on, which left me with no money in my account and unpaid direct debit fees.

I've sent all the evidence (emails etc) from my end; and the bank have to send all their records to the Ombudsman also (which I presume will be recordings of the calls).

Does anyone know how these calls are saved in the bank's records? Are there media developers working there especially to manage a library of these recordings? If so, is there a chance that the bank could edit/cut parts of the calls to go in their favour?

Sounds a bit paraoid I know, but I work in media so I know how easy it is to chop a piece of audio. I just don't know what kind of a media team are working in banks/if someone would even get away with asking a developer to edit a recording in there?

L1011

The recordings should be timecoded. There won't be a media team working on them; it'll be a commercial system bought in from elsewhere.

Its quite common to get a 'transcript' of calls which is often 'accidentally' badly transcribed but the actual recordings aren't that easy to mess with.

quizmaster83

So would they be sending the transcriptions on to the Ombudsman or the actual recordings?

L1011

quizmaster83 wrote: »

So would they be sending the transcriptions on to the Ombudsman or the actual recordings?

Depends what they're asked for.

quizmaster83

Ok, let's hope it's the actual calls. Thanks a million, that was really helpful. It's put me at my ease that they can't necessarily edit the calls anyways.

quizmaster83

L1011 wrote: »

The recordings should be timecoded. There won't be a media team working on them; it'll be a commercial system bought in from elsewhere.

Its quite common to get a 'transcript' of calls which is often 'accidentally' badly transcribed but the actual recordings aren't that easy to mess with.

Sorry, one more question - would these transcriptions be automatically generated by the same software which records the calls or manually? I'm presuming that either way, it's easy to edit these afterwards....

Thargor

Manually transcribed, not a hope of automatic software being good enough yet. They'll be outsourcing it to a company most likely (probably not even Irish) and the third party company wont risk their entire business for the sake of a few thousand Euro, you're worrying about nothing.

slimjimmc

Mod: Moved to Banking & Insurance & Pensions.

Teyla Emmagan

The bank I worked in we only recorded a small percentage of calls. And that was for QA/training purposes. And then the calls were wiped about once a month. So there may be no recording left of your calls OP (if one was ever taken).

quizmaster83

Thargor wrote: »

Manually transcribed, not a hope of automatic software being good enough yet. They'll be outsourcing it to a company most likely (probably not even Irish) and the third party company wont risk their entire business for the sake of a few thousand Euro, you're worrying about nothing.

That's also reassuring thanks. Do the outscourced company return the files in a non-editable format though?

Nervous Wreck

You're being extremely paranoid OP. Editing a call and getting caught would result in a fine much heavier than the few quid they'd be paying you for returned DD fees etc.

quizmaster83

Teyla Emmagan wrote: »

The bank I worked in we only recorded a small percentage of calls. And that was for QA/training purposes. And then the calls were wiped about once a month. So there may be no recording left of your calls OP (if one was ever taken).

Good point. I suppose they do say "may be recorded". There were one or two calls were the rep reiterated it at the start of the call so I presume those calls definitely were...

quizmaster83

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

You're being extremely paranoid OP. Editing a call and getting caught would result in a fine much heavier than the few quid they'd be paying you for returned DD fees etc.

Yeah, that's true. I presume if I pointed out that it was different to the original this would be investigated and they could get caught

Nervous Wreck

quizmaster83 wrote: »

Good point. I suppose they do say "may be recorded". There were one or two calls were the rep reiterated it at the start of the call so I presume those calls definitely were...

The customer service agent will have no idea whether it's being recorded at all but they're obliged to tell you that it could be so you can opt out of a call that's possibly being recorded.

quizmaster83

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

The customer service agent will have no idea whether it's being recorded at all but they're obliged to tell you that it could be so you can opt out of a call that's possibly being recorded.

Oh ok. God, I was under the impression that all calls were recorded. The bank could just say to the Ombudsman that they don't have recordings of the calls which I referred to in the issue..*gulp...

Nervous Wreck

quizmaster83 wrote: »

Oh ok. God, I was under the impression that all calls were recorded. The bank could just say to the Ombudsman that they don't have recordings of the calls which I referred to in the issue..*gulp...

Again, you're assuming they'd lie to the FSO to save out on what'll probably amount to what ~€100? No financial institution would take that risk.

quizmaster83

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

Again, you're assuming they'd lie to the FSO to save out on what'll probably amount to what ~€100? No financial institution would take that risk.

You're absolutely right, I'm worrying over nothing. Thanks Nervous Wreck!