An Uber ride-sharing and food delivery service was unavailable to a woman whose first name was deemed offensive. According to Australian Swastika Chandra, who was raised in Fiji, her first name means “good luck” in Sanskrit. She revealed this to the New York Post.
When Ms. Chandra attempted to order a meal from Uber Eats in October of last year, something went wrong. During the payment phase, she received notification that her name had violated the company’s policies.
“This pop-up said, ‘Your first name is in violation and you need to change your name on the app,'” the 35-year-old told A Current Affair, while placing an afternoon meal order and proceeding to the payment stage.
Notably, in Western contexts, the term is predominantly linked with the Nazi Party of Germany. It took five months and the intervention of the Hindu Council of Australia and the New South Wales attorney-general to get her account reinstated.
”They don’t know that the Hindus used it for thousands of years before Hitler used it in the wrong way. It is a very common name. I know four or five other girls with the same name. In school, we had two or three other girls with the same name – It means good luck and it means good things for me. I’m very proud of my name. I believe in the good that comes with it and I’m not changing it for anyone,” she added.
The Jewish Board of Deputies also backed Ms Chandra’s fight, telling A Current Affair: “There is a difference between Ms Chandra innocently using her name and the deployment of a sinister symbol.”
Uber also issued an apology to Ms Chandra and issued a statement. ”Uber is committed to facilitating a safe and welcoming environment for all users. For that reason, Uber has a global policy of restricting access to users whose names entered into the Uber app contain potentially offensive words.
Since names can have varying cultural connotations, our teams handle situations such as these case-by-case to make sure every account is treated equally. In this instance, we granted MS. Chandra’s request to use the app once more. The statement said, “We appreciate Ms. Chandra’s patience as we reviewed the matter, which took longer than we had hoped.” We have apologized to her for any inconvenience this caused her.
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