I’ve Been There

I dread calling the credit card company or the bank; we go through all the security rigmarole and then they say the magic words… you’re Diana… let me transfer you to security.

Transgender woman’s bank account frozen because she ‘sounded like a man’ on phone 
Metro UK
By Georgia Diebelius
5 Sep 2018

A transgender woman’s bank account was frozen after a phone banking system identified her voice as a man’s.

Distraught Sophia Reis, 47, from Carlton, Nottinghamshire, said she was left ‘humiliated and embarrassed’ after the incident.

She is now fighting with the bank to ensure that other transgender people are not treated the same.

Miss Reis, who moved to Nottingham 18 years ago, said she informed Santander last November that she would no longer be named Sergio on the account.

She said the bank changed her details and her new identity was registered, but on Thursday, August 30, she went through a traumatic ordeal with Santander’s phone banking staff.
[…]
‘They said “my voice did not match my profile because it sounded like a man on the phone and not a woman”. The whole situation is inadmissible.

Yep, that happened to me, they froze my credit card.

Lucky I have two credit cards and a debit card so could use those while I straighten it out, it only took one day for them to figure it out because I told them the date for them to look up. The comical part was when I called them up (no, I didn’t call the phone number that they left on my answering machine but the number on the back of the credit card) they transferred me security again! Once again I explained why I was calling and once again she was going to freeze my account until I heard her go, Oh, oh… I see you’re transgender! Duh! I then told her why I called in the first place, two fraudulent purchases on my statement.

So now when I run into problems I go to the bank and fix it there.

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This morning I am off to do a guest lecture at a university down in New Haven, the first of seven classes that I am teaching this semester.