" I never said that!" - the importance of telephone call recording
The Financial Ombudsman Service states:
"Both firms and their customers are making increasing use of the telephone for a wide range of transactions. And subsequent disputes about exactly who said what feature more and more frequently in our caseload. When this happens, it is obviously far easier to resolve matters if the firm has tape-recorded calls, or followed them up with a clear and agreed written statement of what was discussed. We can otherwise be left to try and resolve the matter by assessing conflicting versions of critical conversations, taking account of the wider circumstances of the case and our knowledge of insurers’ procedures.
Recordings are clearly important where a telephone conversation takes the place of a completed and agreed proposal form. But calls relating to claims also give rise to disputes. Did the customer report the theft of this item or not? Did the insurer agree to that repair proceeding without delay? Did the firm inform the customer that the required medical treatment was not covered?
Some time ago, the Insurance Ombudsman Bureau stressed the importance of firms recording critical telephone transactions, or of their being able to demonstrate their version of events in some other convincing way. We are pleased to note that a number of firms do now appear, as a matter of course, to make and retain good quality recordings of critical calls. We regard this as good industry practice and we expect to be able to resolve disputes about what was or was not said by referring to these recordings. If recordings are not available, we will look to the firm to set out why on the balance of probabilities we should accept its version of events rather than the customer’s.
Where we cannot determine with any confidence what took place, we may decide to give the customer the benefit of any doubt and/or to conclude that there has been a genuine misunderstanding. In such instances, we will try to place the parties in the position we believe they would have been in had the misunderstanding not occurred. In cases of alleged non-disclosure, for example, where we think that a request for information (or the response to it) was uncertain, we may review the claim as though the customer had given the correct information. "
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