Are they legal?
First, record calls business requires more than your own consent according to the rules of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). They need your consent to be able to make these recordings, but also a legal and valid reason to collect the information.
In this way, your operator has to meet one of the following criteria: it is required for the fulfillment of a contract, it is necessary to comply with legal requirements, it is needed to protect your or their interests, it is required for security or interest reasons public, or it is in your legitimate interest. For this reason, the usual customer service calls in which they say that you can be recorded are not usually made or are not preserved, so be careful with this detail.
Validity of voice contracts
The voice contracts They are just as valid as the written ones, so if you want to prove something that they have told you by phone because they want to overcharge you for a service, you need to unsubscribe without paying the permanence or you are faced with a case in which you need it, access recordings what your company does to you can be of great help.
The verbal contracts They are oral agreements of two or more parties and have the same validity, rights and obligations as the written ones. Those for the provision of services are very frequent in companies, and almost necessary in operators in which many services are contracted by telephone.
Recorded telephone contracts are valid, as indicated in article 1278 of the Civil Code, which states that the Format, but certain clauses must be met for its full validity. On the other hand, article 1261 indicates the reasons why there will be no contract. Only worth if there is approval by both parties, if the reason for the hiring is true, if the service or product is reflected and true and if there is an obligation by either party. If you contract the telephone, fiber optic, a mobile line or whatever you want in a telecommunications operator, both parties agree, the service is specified and you have the obligation to pay every month, this contract is legally valid.
It is also important, and this is also clarified by the AEPD (Spanish Agency for Data Protection), that the phone contracts are legal in accordance with article 98 of Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007, but its ratification is required in writing or by any other durable medium, and it will be bound when the offer has been accepted with a signature or with the sending of the acceptance of the agreement in writing. Therefore, after the call, it usually sends you a document or message giving you all the information about what you have agreed.
Breach of contract
If a telephone contract is breached by one of the parties, or it happens that it does not comply with what has been agreed, the recordings are the only existing way to demonstrate this. There are also written documents, which you will have to look for, although there may be something in them that they told you in the call that does not appear or is not specified.
If they have not fulfilled their part, you can claim what they have unduly charged you, unsubscribe without having to pay any penalty or make the decision relevant to your situation. What you can do in this case will depend on what you need and the situation you are in, however, for this you may need to access them first.
Request the recordings
If you come across the case that the company has changed its conditions unilaterally and without prior notice, they have offered you something and you have received another service, they have made a false promise or you need, for some reason, to access the recordings that have been made to you You should know that you can request them from the operator itself.
According to Article 15 of the GDPR, you have right to access your personal data, something that extends to recordings of your phone calls. If he receives your request, he has a maximum term to comply with it of 30 days. Therefore, they have to have the ability to be able to search for them and provide them to you when you need it.
In the event that you need to request one in particular, several, or want to confirm certain information before making a decision, you should know that you can do it and they have to provide you with this information legally, so we will tell you how you can claim your rights.
How to do it
If you want to order them, the best way to do it is by calling the Customer Service from your company so that you can be transferred to an operator who will take care of your request. For example, at Vodafone you can call 22123, at Orange 1470, at Vodafone at 22123, at Movistar at 1004. Depending on your company, call the customer service number to be informed of how you can order them. You can also contact them by email, form, chat, WhatsApp or the different ways of care or help that they provide you depending on the specific operator.
For example, if you want to do it in Orange on the web, you have to go to the help section, contact us and claim, suggestion. There you will write what you want and they will answer you within a maximum period of 48 hours. The best thing is that you look for what best suits it.
Another thing you can do if you want to make sure is send a burofax to the company (check the address) requesting this information, since they will have the obligation to do so and you will be able to demonstrate your communication reliably, although it will take longer. You can also go to an office near you to be informed, if there is one, although they probably won’t be able to do much more from there than tell you how you can do it.
Can they refuse?
Many operators have problems or do not want to offer this information to their users. For this reason, you can find yourself in many cases in which they indicate that they have technical problems, they give you long, they tell you that they cannot do it, that there is no such recording or similar situations. This is no longer so often because they have the obligation to provide them when you ask.
Remember that, although they have a usual deadline to respond to your requests in 24 or 48 hours, they have a deadline to give you this content of a maximum of 30 days. If they don’t, you can claim to the AEPD and they risk a fine for breach of your rights. This is the last way you can go to request access to your recordings if they ignore you.
What the AEPD says
A resolution of the AEPD on a Movistar client requesting copy of your recordings telephone calls for a Movistar Fusión contract started in June 2018 ends with the resolution that it declares itself competent to resolve the case in accordance with the provisions of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of April 27 of 2016 and in article 47 of Organic Law 3/2018, of December 5. This indicates that the complaining party has right to be provided.
Therefore, although this was something that was already mandatory by law, the AEPD had to act so that a client could obtain the recordings. This opens the door for others to also be encouraged to do so without reducing the problems that telephone operators and other service providers usually put up. You have to know that you can also request those of other companies, such as your bank, energy marketer, etc.
Of course, the best thing, and this is also indicated by the AEPD, is that what is indicated and agreed in the telephone conversations is also ratified in writing. Thus, you can claim your rights without having to resort to them. It is something that may also be necessary on specific occasions. I said, you have the right to claim it and you can exercise it whenever you want.