A livid customer is threatening to take his bank to court for sexual discrimination after repeatedly being mistaken for a woman due to his high pitched voice. At first, law lecturer Graham O'Brien thought that not being able to access his telephone banking facility at Halifax has just been pure bad luck. However, it soon became clear that the reason he was not able to withdraw cash was because call centre staff thought he was someone trying to fraud the bank by using a female voice to try and gain details of a male's account. According to the Daily Mail, the bank admitted to the mix-up in a letter it sent to Mr O'Brien stating: "Having passed our security requirements you were transferred to an operator who garnered the impression the individual accessing your account was female." But Mr O’Brien’s ruffled feathers are not soothed, and he is now thinking about suing the bank. "It has just been unbelievable. I feel I have been humiliated and alienated," he said. "There's the patronising way they've spoken to me and there's the humiliation of going into the branch and dealing with it," he added. The law lecturer’s woes started back in July when he rang his bank to check whether his salary had gone into his account. He answered the security questions correctly, but the male call centre worker placed him on hold. "He then came back on and told me their computer system had gone down and he couldn't help me. I thought nothing of it at the time and ended the call," said Mr O'Brien. However next time he rang he was told to visit a branch, and when he did so was told a 'suspect customer', possibly a woman, had been trying to access his account and it had been suspended. They said it would be reactivated, but the same thing happened again and again. It finally became clear just what the problem was – his voice. "The ridiculous part about it is that any tele-banking customer has to answer questions about themselves as a security measure to avoid fraud," he said. "I did this on every occasion, and they still wouldn't accept that I was Graham O'Brien." "Just because a man has a high-pitched voice, does that mean it's a woman? "They're labelling it. They're saying, "You're not who you say you are". "They're putting a label on someone who's a bit different from the rest. It makes you feel someone's impeding your rights as a human. It makes you feel really bad."
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