Being Transgender Makes Your Green Badge Turn Red

[Hannah8418]

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

[Inna22]

@Hannah8418 Hannah, you are overthinking it. There are many people here who had changes to the account for various reasons. I also changed the name for the hosting purposes (long story) but remain Inna here. I do not mind being Inna so I guess it is a bit easier for me. There are many people who have two names but only one is doing the posting. I know there are many situations when you are judged and assumptions are made but not around here. Keep posting often and we will soon remember that you are Hannah. As for support... one needs emotional support after dealing with Airbnb support. They are absolutely worthless in every respect. Don't waste your time on them.

[Hannah8418]

Thank you, Inna. It's the principle but mainly it's for safety. I worry, because it's really not a safe time to be Trans around here, or anywhere in the US right now, but I'm in the bible belt, from the state that passed laws against transgender people specifically...and from a town with a population of only 160K as opposed to 2.75Million. A town where everybody knows everybody. And I have had to pretend to be someone else...for over 3/4 of my life, keeping myself hidden, locked away and I have never been happier than I am at this point in my life, and I'd rather just not wear that tag ever again. And thank you, again, for replying! 

♥️Hannah

[Marie8425]

@Hannah8418 

Hannah

Not intending disrespect discrimination is real and very hurtful.

My intent is to try an ease some of your sting.

Showing my age, but I have  my time managing a Y2k Project.  I know many don't even know what that was.  There was a time were computers just assumed the century was "19" so all dates and it is amazing how many dates a computer uses all assumed century "19".  It wasn't a unexpectant surprise that the century "20" was coming.Still most companies waited to 1999 to address.  Everyone needed mainframe programmers so we actually imported programmers to work on the project.  As you are familiar computers that you think have been fixed sometimes rear the ugly head of an error.   Programmers are good because they just habitually don't make errors.

What I am trying to say is no transgender is not an unexpected surprise.  Yes, ABB like most companies waited until the last minute to address.  Yes, you have found a programing error.  A severe error.  An error that needs to be addressed quickly.   A computer behaving inappropriately is an  error that yes is fixable but computer errors are not received well by the people who coded  the error.

[Hannah8418]

Thank you Marie. I absolutely know what about Y2K....Thank you for your message. I do get it, but it just stings that much more when they say EVERYONE GOT UNVERIFIED....Anyway hey did fix the community profile name..ive gotta check on my verified status , since ive ben verified for 5 years until the other day...lol Yeah ive been coding for almost 2 decades at the same place but im looking for a change. Take care ....we can chitchat about coding sometime!!!

Hannah

[Bhumika]

Hi @Hannah8418 ,

I'm truly sorry to hear of the user experience while setting up your Community Center profile.

After having a closer look, I am able to change the user name manually. However, there might be a bug with syncing the profile names currently.

I’ll reach out to the tech team so they can look into this and hopefully resolve it for future community members.

Kind regards, 

Bhumika

[Hannah8418]

Thank you so much for your time and kindness!!! 

Best wishes

Hannah

[Bhumika · Accepted solution]

Hi @Hannah8418 , thanks for your patience while we were trying to resolve this.

I am glad to share a quick update to let you know that the sync issue with your profile name has been fixed.

Thank you so much for reporting this. You have helped us find an issue with the way usernames are passed on to the Community Center and we'll keep working to ensure preferred names are always captured on the forum names.

Please feel free to reach out in case of any questions or concerns.

Kind regards,

Bhumika