A woman says she was barred from booking a flight three times - because she is called ISIS.
Rani Isis Lake, 29, of Kent, is named after the Egyptian goddess and has always attracted comments from people about her unusual monicker.
She says it had never caused her any trouble until she tried to book internal flights for a
year-long volunteering trip to Canada next year.
Ms Lake says she bought a flight between Toronto and Vancouver with three different agents - only to have it mysteriously cancelled by each of them.
The first agent blamed 'technical problems' and the other two accused her of cancelling it herself as they scrapped her booking.
After the three failed bookings over the phone Isis finally got her flight for later this month after her mum booked it using Isis's other first name of Rani.
Ms Lake, a chef, said she feels discriminated against over her name and fears how she will be treated when security officials in Canada see her passport.
She said: 'I'm a bit incensed. It's completely ridiculous and completely unfair.
'I don't want to change my name and I shouldn't have to.
'They can't do that. It is sort of discriminatory.'
Ms Lake said she has always uses her middle name first, and has booked tickets and travelled in the past using it.
Around a year ago she booked a flight from London to Toronto on December 18 to start a year of conservation work in Canada and said she had no problems.
But she ran into trouble a month ago when she decided she wanted to spend Christmas in Vancouver and tried to book an internal flight across Canada with budget airline Sunwing.
She tried first with Expedia and was on course to book a flight until she gave her name and was quickly told there were
technical problems with taking bookings'.
Ms Lake said: 'They promised someone would call me back, but never did.'
Next she tried Lastminute.com but despite booking and paying for the £190 transfer got an email half an hour later saying her purchase had been cancelled.
She said: 'The email said 'as you requested your flight has been cancelled'.
'I called and said I hadn't cancelled it, but they said 'sorry, it has gone now' and they gave me a refund.'
Ms Lake, who was now getting suspicious, finally phoned CheapOair and once again successfully booked and paid.
But again, a day later, she had another email saying the flight had been cancelled at HER request.
When she called to complain she was told the entire airline was no longer accepting bookings through the company - despite still advertising flights online.
Frustrated Ms Lake finally got her mum to book her flights using her alternative name 'Rani', and transferred her the cash.
She said: 'I'm just lucky I have a different name to use.
'I hope it's not discrimination, but I can't see how it can't be - it's too suspicious.
'I'm not sure what's going to happen when I go through the airport - I am worried - but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.'
Lastminute and CheapOair blamed the cancellation on Sunwing - who denied ever cancelling any flights for Ms Lake, despite her having email confirmation.
A spokesperson for Expedia apologised for the customer services team for not returning Isis' call and added: 'We are happy to speak to her and see if we can provide any assistance for her upcoming trip to Canada.'
0 comments:
Post a Comment