I can’t even count how many hours I’ve spent in the past year arguing about some BS charge, trying to get something repaired under warranty, or even trying to redeem an valid coupon that was sent to me. I’ve reached a point where I’m exhausted in trying to fight these kinds of things but I feel like I can’t just let any of it go. Sometimes I wish I could hire a Karen, it would be 100% worth it.
This is why I always record calls with major corporations when I’m talking about money. I’ve never had to actually resort to sending them recordings, but I have used the “Well, every call made from this phone is recorded, so I can go back and pull the recording of what I’ve been told if you don’t have it in your system” line a couple times.
What do you use to do this?
I run those calls through my own phone system, which I host on a system in my basement. There are a couple main options out there, I used FreePBX for a while but now I’m using 3CX. They don’t require a ton of computing power-- mine runs on a virtual server inside a larger system, but you could run one off of an inexpensive thin client from eBay if you wanted to.
I get my phone number from VoIP.ms, which is pretty inexpensive and has worked well for me for years.
For a phone, you can either use a soft phone (an app on your computer or smartphone), or use an older IP phone off eBay (which is what I do since I also have a Plantronics wireless headset that connects to it).
It’s pretty easy to get started, but you do need to make sure you’re configuring everything correctly since selfhosted services can open up security holes in your network if you don’t know what you’re doing.