Hello all,
I'm Hannah and I've been a member [edit: of Airbnb] for over 5 years but I am new to the community forums. It really saddens me to be writing this. A long time ago, before Airbnb had a field for "Preferred Name", I had sent them multiple feedbacks BEGGING them to implement a way for people like me to be able to contact a host without having to feel awkward or having to explain why my name didn't match my picture. And since then, my girlfriend, whom I've been with for 12 years, has been booking our stays with her account. Well, I was surprised when I logged in and saw that they now have a place for "Preferred Name", and I happily put "Hannah" in and even sent them a message giving Airbnb credit where credit was due.
Well then, I came here to the community forum and noticed that I could not change my Community Profile account name, so it essentially shows a picture of me, Hannah, with the name John8418 under it. So, I sent Airbnb's support a message asking if they would change it to something that had to do with my preferred name, or at least something that wasn't a male name. This was last week, and they said someone would get in touch, well not one person contacted me on Friday and then I started noticing things like my issue had changed from what I sent them a message about, and now read "What you need help with " - Verifying Your Identity.... Thats one thing I don't need help with because I know who I am, and my issue had nothing to do with my identity .... or so I thought. I then noticed that even though all my verification items had a check beside them and I have a valid Driver's License uploaded and my Legal Name matches my driver's license, they turned my green "Verified" badge to "Red" and tried to tell me that this happened to everyone's green badge...SO now, I have a red badge, and they will not fix my Community Profile name...And after a week of them sending me messages at 2am and 5am, 6am but, during MY OPERATING HOURS, which is Eastern Standard Time, it was crickets... I pleaded with them to change my community profile name because I don't really feel safe posting with my real name and basically saying HEY LOOK AT ME IM TRANSGENDER, it's quite embarrassing and a little dysphoric to be honest.
And at this point since they won't escalate, and no one has gotten in touch with me except someone at a helpdesk on the other side of the earth in a completely opposite Timezone. I have uploaded screenshots and images and at this point it's really starting to feel like I am being discriminated against. My girlfriend is livid and many of my friends that have accounts on here are a little irritated as well...And what's really bad is that fixing the community profile name would have taken all of 30 seconds for them , I write software and websites for a living (for going on 20 years now for the same company) and could change a single persons data in under a minute and could implement all needed code to fix it permanently for everyone in under an hour.. The change is literally THAT SIMPLE...but what do they do instead??? They UNVERIFY ME????
I'm kind of used to getting looked at funny, and i hear people laugh or snicker as I walk by, and even heard store employees call me a weirdo when she didn't think I could hear her, Or when I walk up to a sales rep at Hobby Lobby and ask "I was wondering if you guys had....." and before I could even get out the sentence she already had answered "No you should try at Michaels". And these are just a few of the things I've dealt with. There's Doctors, Urgent Cares, and many others. I don't really want to have to start writing letters to all of their partners under their own discrimination policy, but I'm past being hurt by it. They changed my issue topic to "New Issue" but still have made no attempts to fix my badge nor my community profile name. And what's going to happen is they are going to send me another message at like 3am... And this morning as soon as they messaged me, I messaged back within 30 seconds...and they wouldn't respond after that. I have pleaded with them that I AM THE SAME PERSON...IM ON MY SAME ACCOUNT, All I did was added Hannah to the Preferred Name field...And I can't believe they told me that EVERYONES GREEN BADGE WENT TO RED....because that is a straight up lie...And it's like the support people just simply don't want to escalate the situation, nor do they want to fix it. I don't know what to do other than begin writing letters and posting this on my social media accounts.
Ugggggh... Sincerely,
Hannah
