Apparently her ex husband told her to not talk to them on the phone because they record everything you say and will or may use it against you in court or something to that effect. I have no idea if there is any validity to that at all.
Ugh, he sounds like a piece of work.
Yes, almost every credit card company does record what you say (they let you know this in advance). It's mostly for training/QA purposes and internal quality control. Most use the NICE (Israeli company, really cool software that my corporation uses as well) system.
The purpose of the system is not to entrap customers in lies so that they can take them to court and play their words against them. They simply want to make sure their low level employees aren't lying to customers and promising things that the company can't deliver, or, which could get them in hot water. Supervisors/execs also can scan through that software to notice common words used, or inappropriate words used. If you're a VP at Sprint and you run a search for "T-Mobile" or "Verizion" you can see how often your competitors are coming up in conversations with your call center employees. You can also look up "f***" and reprimand any of your call center employees who are swearing at customers... or, you can coach employees who are getting sworn at a lot on how to avoid it coming to that.
That said, sure... if you call in and outright lie to them I suppose they can pursue legal action and potentially use your lies against you in a legal setting (those laws vary by state). That mostly comes into play for things like fraud claims though.
For example: You call in and tell them that you want to dispute a bunch of charges. They ask you what charges you would like to dispute, you tell them there were 12 charges posted in Aspen, CO totaling $9,000... but, you've never been to Aspen... they do some very basic investigation and find out that you actually were in Aspen that weekend and did indeed rack up those charges. I'm sure that they could use that against you if it made sense for them to do so. Most likely though, at that point they have a bunch of other things to use against you as well.
All of that said, it's VERY unlikely that your creditor is going to take you to court over $3800 in the first place (that's nothing to them in the grand scheme of things, they are going to send you to collections before ever involving the courts)... and outrageously unlikely that you're ever going to make it to a trial setting (where that recording might or might not be played) over a $3800 balance. Those companies are going to settle/work out an agreement before they have to get lawyers/courts involved and pay all those fees, which are most likely going to exceed the $3800 they are fighting over.
Anyway, how to you go about asking for a reduced payment amount or a change in the interest rate ? If you just say you can't afford it then they might actually listen to you ?
In order to get a meaningful decrease you generally have to agree to freeze the card. Most companies aren't going to agree to lower someones (especially someone with a delinquent payment record) rate and also keep their credit available to them, that's just asking for abuse.
If you call and explain the situation and explain that you really want to work with the company to pay off your obligation, they may or may not work with you and meet you somewhere in the middle.
That said, some of these companies do have REALLY bad customer service at the lower levels, and you could call in and end up talking to a brick wall that is just reading a script and who will refuse to work with you. If that happens, it happens. You tried to negotiate in good faith and they wouldn't work with you... might be time to set up a consultation with a lawyer, or, wait for it to get thrown into collections and then try your luck at negotiating with the collections company.
At the end of the day... if you call in and explain your situation and they tell you to pound sand and refuse to work with you at all. That's not going to hurt you in any way if those words do come up in a legal setting (which is extremely unlikely). If anything, you're most likely going to be asking them to play that recording so you can prove that you tried to negotiate in good faith, and they refused your offer.
