A woman was banned from using a taxi because of her name
The taxi company Uber has banned a woman from using its services because of her name.
This was reported by SSPDaily.
The woman's name is Swastika Chandra. Her name means "good luck" in Sanskrit, but it is also the name of the infamous Nazi symbol. She claims that she was banned from using the service because the company classified her name as "potentially offensive."
The 35-year-old woman told Australia's A Current Affair program: "One day I was ordering food, got to the payment stage, and then a window popped up saying: "Your name is not correct and you need to change your name in the app." They don't know that Hindus used this name for thousands of years before Hitler used it incorrectly. It's a very common name. I personally know four or five other girls with this name. At school, we had two or three other girls with this name - it means good luck, and for me it means good things. I am very proud of my name. I believe in the good that is associated with it, and I would not change it for anything."
The saga lasted five months, and in fact, the Hindu Council of Australia, as well as the country's Jewish community, intervened and defended her before Uber took action. The Hindi community is now honoring the woman for standing up to Uber, and the company has released a statement apologizing to her.
"Uber is committed to fostering a safe and welcoming environment for all users. For this reason, Uber has a global policy of restricting access to users whose names entered in the app contain potentially offensive words. We recognize that there are different cultural nuances in names, and therefore our teams review such incidents on an individual basis to ensure that each account is fairly evaluated. In this case, after reviewing Chandra's request, we have restored her access to the app. We apologize for the inconvenience she experienced and appreciate her patience during the review, which took longer than we expected," the company said.
