Decision Report 201301242

Summary

Mr C had on occasion recorded phone conversations with members of the housing association's staff. He was, however, then told that, while calls from customers were recorded, the association's guidance said that staff should decline requests from customers wishing to record calls. Mr C complained that this was unreasonable, and also said that a complaint he had raised was dealt with by a member of senior staff, rather than being escalated to the chief executive.

After investigating this, we did not uphold Mr C's complaints. The association confirmed that there was such guidance for customer service staff, but that the decision was generally left to their discretion. However, they had decided that there was a need to unify practice, and said they would review their policy about members of the public recording phone conversations. Once this was completed, customers would be informed. We found this reasonable. We also found that the complaint had been dealt with in accordance with the complaints procedure, and that a designated senior member of staff had replied to Mr C's complaint at the final stage, and signposted Mr C to the SPSO.