I wonder whether having a recording has ever helped anyone when dealing with comcast. I'm doubtful. They're a large sophisticated organisation with an army of lawyers who will just do whatever they will do without regard for your recording.

Do you actually do that? Have you tried it?

I'm a consultant and discuss complicated things with clients several times a day. Exactly the type of conversation that will include bits and pieces that people want to take note of.

If someone asked my permission to record a conversation I would decline and tell them that I'm probably not the best fit for them moving forward. I'm certain that most other consultants in any professional field would do the same. The reason being simply that it's a huge red flag - such a client is guaranteed to be a huge pain in the butt - much better to spend your time with other more co-operative clients.

I say the same thing they say to me. I'll be recording this call for quality assurance.

such as holding others legally accountable for their legally binding verbal agreements

Nonsense. Do you record a lot of legally binding verbal agreements on your Android phone? I'm certain that you do not.

Anything worth agreeing in a "legally binding verbal agreement" is worth making a written agreement. It's been a long time since I studied law but IIRC verbal agreements are only really enforceable where they're commonplace agreements and they are at least partially performed. For example, "if you pay me $x per month you can put your cows in my top paddock" is legally enforceable, but having a recording of such a conversation won't make it so - it's already enforceable once the cows are in the paddock.

If you want a more complex, contingent agreement like "you need to pay me $x if it rains tomorrow", it's not really enforceable in any practical sense. A recorded verbal agreement would need to be very long winded to cover all the edge cases... how much rain, for how long, where does it need to rain, what times are "tomorrow", does "rain" include sleet, what about hail, et cetera. Of course - this type of agreement is always written down.

Additionally, I acknowledge that this hasn't made it into case law yet, but since the advent of deep-fakes is this type of recording going to be reliable in court? "I never said that" seems like a plausible defense - so again, it's going to come back to performance of the contract.

Finally, agreements worth making tend to involve a lot of nuance. There's a courtship, a dance, a tête-à-tête, asking someone whether you can record them is just plain weird. The act of trying to record someone is likely to influence the agreement itself.