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Firstly I want to apologise if I put this in the wrong place, I'm newly registered here (done a bit of reading before). I'd also like to point out I'm not looking for money or compensation here, but it's the broader problem I have trouble with.
Thirdly I'm transgender, and my voice does not necessarily match up with my name. I've had a number of issues with this in the past (being hung up on, being told to get the "actual account holder" to ring back etc) but my phone provider, last year, managed the worst of it. I managed to ring up a bill of several hundred pounds, I knew what happened immediately and at no point ever claimed I didn't owe the money, but there was no way I'd have it all to pay off in one go.
I sat in one of the company stores and spoke to the staff about what was going on, and they agreed to ring up CS and speak to them for me. This guy, on the other end of the phone, asked to speak to me to confirm who I was. I got as far as saying "hello" before he decided I couldn't possibly be who I was, there was no chance it was right, and I needed to show the store staff ID to go any further. I did, the store staff backed me up several times, but he kept insisting "credit cards are not identification" (whilst this may be true, I've never actually had any credit cards). Eventually I went outside for a smoke before I exploded, came back in, the store manager spoke to me and I explained what had happened...
And we rang up, again, got speaking to someone else, and got the whole thing sorted out. They eventually gave me the opportunity to pay back the debt in fortnightly installments, and all has now been paid off.
However, the company in question has never actually apologised for what happened. There was never any sort of acknowledgement of "hey we screwed up and we're sorry". I get this attitude a lot and sometimes I have to wonder if it's worth pushing, but if I'm being denied access to any sort of accounts (phone, utilities - the bank and I have an ongoing saga where at one point they were flagging my account for fraud roughly every 6 weeks, but they've finally knocked that on the head, I hope), is there anything I can do bar just sitting there and letting it happen every time?
For several reasons, btw, I can't have hormone therapy or surgical intervention. I'm stuck with the voice I've got.
Thirdly I'm transgender, and my voice does not necessarily match up with my name. I've had a number of issues with this in the past (being hung up on, being told to get the "actual account holder" to ring back etc) but my phone provider, last year, managed the worst of it. I managed to ring up a bill of several hundred pounds, I knew what happened immediately and at no point ever claimed I didn't owe the money, but there was no way I'd have it all to pay off in one go.
I sat in one of the company stores and spoke to the staff about what was going on, and they agreed to ring up CS and speak to them for me. This guy, on the other end of the phone, asked to speak to me to confirm who I was. I got as far as saying "hello" before he decided I couldn't possibly be who I was, there was no chance it was right, and I needed to show the store staff ID to go any further. I did, the store staff backed me up several times, but he kept insisting "credit cards are not identification" (whilst this may be true, I've never actually had any credit cards). Eventually I went outside for a smoke before I exploded, came back in, the store manager spoke to me and I explained what had happened...
And we rang up, again, got speaking to someone else, and got the whole thing sorted out. They eventually gave me the opportunity to pay back the debt in fortnightly installments, and all has now been paid off.
However, the company in question has never actually apologised for what happened. There was never any sort of acknowledgement of "hey we screwed up and we're sorry". I get this attitude a lot and sometimes I have to wonder if it's worth pushing, but if I'm being denied access to any sort of accounts (phone, utilities - the bank and I have an ongoing saga where at one point they were flagging my account for fraud roughly every 6 weeks, but they've finally knocked that on the head, I hope), is there anything I can do bar just sitting there and letting it happen every time?
For several reasons, btw, I can't have hormone therapy or surgical intervention. I'm stuck with the voice I've got.
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