TapeACall works by creating a conference call between you, the person you want to record, and our recording line, which records the call. To be able to create this conference call, your mobile carrier MUST support 3-way conference calling. Without this, the “merge calls” button will not work and TapeACall will not be able to record. Simply give your mobile carrier a call and ask them to enable 3-Way Conference Calling on your line. Once enabled, the “merge calls” button will begin working as intended.
If you haven’t received an activation code, please check to make sure the phone number you entered on the previous screen is correct first. This is to ensure that our verification system is sending the activation code to the correct number. If the phone number is correct and you still have not received your activation code, please press “I didn’t get a code.”
This message happens when you dial in and we are unable to recognize you. Your caller ID needs to match the number you used to activate your account. If you changed your phone number, or have your caller ID blocked, you will get this error.
On networks such as US Cellular, Verizon and Sprint, it can take up to 30 seconds for the "merge calls" button to become enabled. Unfortunately, this is a limitation of your mobile carrier, which is beyond our control. In order to prevent this from affecting your recording process, we suggest pressing the record button to call into the TapeACall first, then calling the party that you wish to record. This way, the person you are calling won't need to be put on hold.
Due to updated security changes, any public recording links shared on versions older than 4.4.1 using the "Share Public Recording URL" feature will no longer work. To re-share existing recordings or share new ones, please update your TapeACall app to the latest version.For more information, please reach out to our support team via email at support@tapeacall.com or through the chat option in the app.To update your TapeACall: Call Recorder app, please click https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tapeacall-call-recorder/id573751328To update your TapeACall Pro: Call Recorder app, please click https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tapeacall-pro-call-recorder/id577499909
This is a less common request, but there are some user’s that needs specific recordings for court or other legal reasons.If the user were to download their recordings themselves or if we send them a TSV or specific recording without having the user reach out to Legal, this is not certified evidence and may not hold up in court.For the user to receive certified evidence that can hold up in court, the user will need to have either an attorney or their local law enforcement to reach out to legal@tapeacall.com. Our legal team will not be able to provide the user directly with certified evidence. They can only provide this to their attorney or law enforcement.
Just like changing a user’s phone number, we need to confirm if the user owns the phone number on the account. We will need the user to provide us with a phone bill that has their name and phone number listed.If they cannot provide a phone bill, you can also check to see if the email they are messaging us with matches the email listed on the account.Once they provide this information, to download a TSV, pull up the user’s account in admin, then go to the Calls tab and select the Export to TSV button. Please note, popup blockers will need to be disabled since that can cause the button to not work.This document will contain all of the user’s recordings (including deleted recordings) providing timestamps and links to where the user can listen to and download each recording.If a recording was deleted from within the app, the links will not work.*Please Note: The links in this file will only last for 30 Days. After this time, the links will expire. This does not mean the recordings are gone. If for whatever reason, the user did not download all of their important recordings and need this file again, you can generate a new TSV which will last for another 30 days.
This is a common request. In order for a user to change their phone number on their account, they will have to contact us directly and provide proof that they have owned both the old and new phone number.To do so, they will need to send us a screenshot of their old phone bill with their name and number as well as a screenshot of a new phone bill with their name and new phone number.Once we have these screenshots, we can update their account in admin. With the new admin, you no longer need to know the correct format of the phone number. Just make sure you enter the phone number correctly including the user's country code and select Enter to save the new number.There are some cases where the user accidentally creates a new account under their new phone number before contacting us. If this is the case, you can change the last four digits of the new account to all 0’s BEFORE updating the old account.If the user has created new recordings under this new account, they will no longer have access to those recordings. Check with the user if those recordings are important, and if they are, you can just provide them with a TSV of those recordings.There are some cases where the user is unable to provide a screenshot of an old phone bill (i.e. An old work phone, it’s listed under their ex-spouse’s name, etc.). In these cases, there are other ways to confirm their phone numbers.To confirm the old phone number, you can check to see if the email listed on the account matches the email that you are currently contacting. The reason this is valid is because the only way to update an email on a TAC account is through the app’s settings while already being logged in.Another method to confirm the old phone number is if the user is already signed into the app under their old phone number. The user can then go into the Settings of the app and select Account. Once selected, they can take a screenshot of this page since it should contain their old phone number. Please note, this method is for iOS only. The app is formatted differently on Android so only the first step or phone bill will work.If the user cannot provide a phone bill for their new phone number, you can simply have them take a screenshot of the top of their contacts list from within the phone app. The phone number for their new device should be displayed at the very top.
If the user definitely has 3-way conference calling, but their calls only last around 1 minute, their carrier most likely drops the call to our recording line since our access numbers remain completely silent. You can confirm this by listening to any call to hear if they were having a conversation with the other party, and the call drops.This only affects some international carries and mostly affects Italian, Australian, and New Zealand users.To bypass this issue, the user will either have to perform the recording process backwards by first calling the party they would like to record, then call into our access number and merge these calls together in this order, or they can contact their carrier directly to have them lift this restriction. This is not an issue that we can resolve from our end.
In admin, if you select the call that the user is complaining about, the mp3 player will be greyed out.Unfortunately, there is not much we as TS can do about these recordings from our end at the moment. We will need to open up a story in Clubhouse for QA to reprocess this call for the user.We can, however, provide the user with the file to their recording from admin so that they can still listen to and download their recordings while waiting on a response. Please note, you will only be able to download the flac file so this will not play as an mp3 when you send the customer this.
There can be some issues where recordings may not appear in their cloud service or the quality of the call will only be bad when listening to it from the cloud service.You can have them disconnect the link to TapeACall by having the user log into their accounts on the cloud service either through the app or website. They should then be able to unlink TapeACall through their account settings.They can then re-link TapeACall by going back into our app and attempt to share their recordings through their preferred cloud service.The user can also try uninstalling their cloud service app on their device, reboot their phone, then reinstall their app again in that order.
You can listen to the user’s affected recording to confirm this issue.You can then ask the user if this issue happened during the call or if this issue is only present in the recording.If this was present during the call, then this issue is caused by poor cell reception at the time of the recording. When creating 3-way conference calls, your cell reception is now split between your phone, the other party’s phone, and our access number. This can sometimes cause feedback during the call.If this issue is only present in the recording itself, then this may have been caused by our access number. Provide the user with a different access number (if available) to see if this improves the call quality. Uninstalling/rebooting/reinstalling can be the next troubleshooting step. If the user needs a specific call, you can create a QA ticket for that call. There may be a chance that the raw file won’t have feedback.
This issue happens whenever our access number cannot recognize the phone number that is calling it.First, make sure the user has an account under the phone number they are calling from. Then make sure the user has “Show My Caller ID” enabled under their phone’s Settings > Phone > Show My Caller ID for iPhones. For Android this is located by selecting the Phone/Dialer app > Select the Menu button in the top right corner (3 vertical dots) > Settings > Call Settings > Additional Settings > Caller ID > Show Number. This needs to be enabled so that our access number can recognize the user’s phone number.If none of the above worked, use SpoofCard to call into the access number they are attempting to reach as their phone number to try and replicate the issue.If you can replicate, report to #tapeacall-support immediately to have the team investigate as this is a code red (our service is just straight up not working).If you hear the initial beep and we start recording, then have the customer uninstall/reboot/reinstall and/or make a QA ticket if that doesn't work.
This is a common request that we see. This is usually the case where someone buys the Pro version of our app and thinks that this is just a one time purchase on iOS.After purchasing the Pro version, this only signs a user up for just one year. After this year, their subscription will expire prompting the user to re-subscribe through the app.Once the user re-subscribes in the app, they are then set up for automatic renewal.Subscriptions took effect around August of 2015. If you see a user with an account that is older than this date, you are free to set them to unlimited. For all other users, you will need to let them know they will need to select a subscription.There are times where someone will have an active subscription and will see the paywall anyway. The simple solution is to have the user select the "Restore" button in the top left corner of the subscriptions page. If a user already purchased a second subscription, please send them the cancel/refund instructions located in our macros. We used to have an option for users to purchase a yearly $7.99 and $19.99 subscription through our website. This used Stripe as a merchant. This stopped around March/April of 2018, but users who already had a subscription kept their subs.You can check to see if they purchased a subscription through our website when this was available by pulling up their account in admin and under the Account Details section, it will show the Stripe ID. Selecting this ID will pull up their Stripe information.If there is no Stripe ID listed next to their App Version, then they had purchased a sub through the App Store or purchased the app through the Play Store.At the moment, when a user’s subscription is automatically renewed this way, this will not update their subscription in admin. The only way to fix this is by manually adding time to their accounts through admin. These can ONLY be cancelled and refunded through dashboard.stripe.com. If you do not have Stripe access, please let Nate know so that he can set you up with an account. If you have questions about how Stripe works, please let a lead or other team member know so that we can show you.
This issue means that the user does not have 3-way conference calling enabled on their carrier’s plan. They will need to contact their carrier to make sure this is enabled.A lot of the time, the user is adamant that this feature is enabled. You can have them test this by making them call two other contacts that they know without calling TapeACall and merge these calls together.If it does not work, then they definitely do not have this feature enabled and will need to contact their carrier.If it does work, then you can have the user call into the access number directly and merge this into a test call and/or provide the user with a different access number from admin to record with.On some CDMA carriers (Verizon and Sprint), the merge calls option may take up to 30 seconds to become enabled. This is simply just a limitation with their carrier and not much we can do.
A lot of the issues that users experience can be caused by having an older version of the app, including the recurring problems that will be mentioned in other articles.From Admin, you can check to see what version app the user is currently on from the “Account Details” section.You can also check what the latest version of the app is through the support channel in slack.If a user has an outdated version, prompt the user to uninstall the app, reboot their device, then reinstall the app again since this is known to solve most issues.
This is one of the most common requests we receive.This happens when the user does not merge the call to our recording line with the conversation they wanted to record.This causes our recording line to remain on hold for the duration of the call.Affected recordings would either be silent, play a beeping noise initially and once after 30 seconds, or it only plays music. This is all due to our recording line being left on hold.Unfortunately, there is no way to recover audio since our access number was not able to record any important audio and you just have to give the user the bad news.
Download TapeACall
.png)
