Why every Giday call opens with "on a recorded line"

"Giday, you've reached Smith Plumbing — Verity speaking, on a recorded line. How can I help you?"

That's the default greeting. You can pick a different one or write your own, and whatever you choose, the notice stays in it. It isn't a separate announcement played before the receptionist picks up. It's part of the same voice, in the same breath, and it cannot be switched off.

An AI receptionist works by listening to your caller, understanding them, and writing down what happened. The transcript that lands in your dashboard is the product. There's no version of this that doesn't make a record of the conversation, whatever a provider's website says.

Australia's surveillance laws are state and territory laws, and they don't agree with each other. In some states a participant can record a private conversation; in others, everyone on the call has to know. And because phone calls cross borders, a business in Brisbane routinely takes calls from people in Sydney, so the practical standard for an Australian business is the strictest state's. The detailed state-by-state table, and the questions to ask any provider, are in our guide on whether an AI receptionist is legal in Australia. This page is about what we did with that.

We are not lawyers and this isn't legal advice. It's the reasoning behind a product decision.

There used to be one, behind a plain-English warning. We withdrew it on 26 August 2026 and deleted the code. In the all-party states the notice is how consent to record is obtained, so a line without it leaves neither you nor us on solid ground. A setting that lets a customer quietly step off that ground isn't a feature. It's a liability with a toggle.

So every Giday line carries the notice, every call, in your receptionist's own voice. There is nothing to find, nothing to remember to turn on, and nothing a staff member can turn off.

This is the question people actually mean. The honest answer from our own measured calls is that what loses callers isn't being told the line is recorded. It's being passed between two voices: a recorded announcement, then a different voice picking up. That seam is where people hang up.

Which is why the notice lives inside the greeting instead of in front of it. One voice, one breath, and the caller is already being asked how they can be helped before the word "recorded" has had time to land. In practice, people answer the question. Nobody has mentioned the notice to us as a reason not to book.

• The call audio is kept at our voice provider for 90 days, then deleted.
• Your transcript stays in your dashboard for as long as you're a client, and you can delete it yourself.
• A caller who asks "are you recording this?" gets a straight yes, and if they're not comfortable, the receptionist offers to have every record of that call deleted, and honours it: the recording and transcript are purged within the hour.
• For health practices in restricted mode, no audio is kept at all and the transcript is deleted.

The detail is on our data-handling page, which is written to be read.

Honesty turns out to sell. The receptionist says it's on a recorded line, says it's your virtual receptionist the moment anyone asks, and never pretends to be a person. Callers can cope with talking to a capable AI. What they can't cope with is being fooled. A caller who's been told the truth twice in the first ten seconds tends to trust the booking that follows. We reckon the honesty is the whole point; it's the house style.