California Phone Call Recording

I have been thinking about setting up an organized system to track my correspondence with businesses and the like. One thing I would like to do is have a detailed record of all emails and phone calls between myself and a business. The basic premise here is that it would make it easier to protect my own consumer rights – “You specifically told me on June 2nd at 10:38am that I would only be billed once!” Stuff like that.

So I figured it might be a good idea to set up a recording system on my home phone to record my conversations. Then hopefully I could save these conversations to digital format and link them to a case number that I would create. But I knew that wiretap laws can be a little tricky, so I googled a bit and found this from Privacy Rights Clearinghouse: “Wiretapping/Eavesdropping on Telephone Conversations: Is There Cause for Concern?” Specifically, this is exactly the information I was looking for:

California law does not allow tape recording of telephone calls unless all parties to the conversation consent (California Penal Code 632), or they are notified of the recording by a distinct “beep tone” warning (CPUC General Order 107-B(II)(A)(5)).

So I think this leaves me with two options:
1) Every time I call up a business or receive a call on my home phone, I ask for the consent of the other end that I record the call.
2) I take detailed written notes of each call as it comes in.

Either way, this isn’t really relevant until I get this system in a workable state. But I thought I would post this information here just as an FYI to my California reader(s).