[Kushan]

Yeah, there's a lot of confusion over where the law sits on this one. The law is very much aimed at protecting consumers from companies doing the recordings, at least that's my understanding from trying to read it, so it's hard to pinpoint exactly where the law sits when it's the other way around.

All I know is what I was told during my training and there was never an official VM document that specifically addressed it (not that I seen, anyway) - it was just what my trainer told me but he made a significant effort to mention it.

For the record, the guy who trained me was one of the "good ones" (from way back in the Telewest days) who would always go out of his way for the customer and knew his stuff - one of the reasons he got the much-sought-after position of trainer. And he was no fan of VM either, he was a Union member and fought hard to look after us phone monkeys, often putting himself on the line when HR decided to do what HR does best and ****ed things up for someone. Suffice it to say, if he said it, there's a good chance he was correct but that's not a 100% guarantee either.

It's interesting that the agent in question refused to hang up, that's definitely something different to what I was told but I wouldn't be surprised if that was less a company policy and more a call centre policy. Offshore has a horrific reputation for agents hanging up on people, so perhaps his unwillingness to hang up has something to do with (presumably?) Virgin/IBM attempting to crack down on it? Nothing short of pure speculation from me though. We were definitely told that we shouldn't hang up on people, but if they were abusive then it was our prerogative (with the occasional HR dick trying to tell us to never hang up and quickly being shot down by a nearby union rep, should they overhear).