Requesting customer service account notes
<p>In another question, <a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/9694/business-not-honoring-promotional-credits-despite-extensive-efforts-to-work-with">here</a>, I had called into my phone company's customer service number in regards to trying to resolve an issue. Part of that back-and-forth discussion ended with me requesting the account notes they had for me on file. I was told by the representative, who claimed to have 7 years of experience in customer service management, that it was <em>illegal</em> for them to give out <em>proprietary</em> account notes like those.</p>

<p>I was intrigued because about 2 months prior I was gathering information to write a formal letter to their correspondence team. In a single night, I made a similar request for account notes and was told they couldn't provide them. Within an hour, I got in touch again with the same request and the lady had provided me with what seemed to be a direct copy/paste of the account notes for more than half of the days that involved my issue. Sometimes you have to ask twice, I suppose.</p>

<p><strong>Question:</strong>  </p>

<ul>
<li>What would make providing those account notes <em>illegal</em> when it would seem like the company would be the one "owns" them?</li>
</ul>

<p>My limited research seemed to suggest that it might involve the <a href="http://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/proprietary-information.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Law of Proprietary Information</a>. However, wouldn't that require someone else (third party?) to be the actual owner of those notes, thus limiting the public availability.</p>

<p>Customer service could have been contracted out to a third party with contractual obligations to the company you are ostensibly dealing with.</p>

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