Well I know I am but...must a man have a male voice?

[EvaBee]

Most of the time I feel like I am my DH's personal assistant but every now and again I am stopped in my tracks.

DH is a forriner so the name thing is easy to deal with.

He's been in the UK for 20+ years and needs to change the address on his UK driving licence. Not that simple apparently. I've just phoned up and pretended to be him and the DVLA woman hung up on me.

She said "I don't believe I am speaking to a man"

If it had been DHs brother phoning, or I'd asked the postman to make the call she would have continued.

I have a fairly normal female voice and am regularly taken for a man on the phone, but only by people/companies who're using my work title of Dr.

Funny, that.

Jeanne, I encourage DH to use his doctor salutation so that I can do things like this (otherwise he'd never use it).

I do this ALL the time, if I'm pretending to be DF (neither patent can be bothered doing anything that I can do for them) I hold my throat above my Adam's apple and speak, changes my voice completely I have only been questioned once as my DF and I said I had a cold

This is funny timing. In an ice cream shop today I was standing behind a man who had a higher voice than any woman I've ever heard. It was like a little girl's voice, but he wasn't baby-talking, he was speaking normally but the voice just didn't fit the body. He must have terrible trouble making official phone calls.

I know someone who got sacked from, then successfully sued their employer because they had a lengthy heated discussion with an internal customer. The name on the file was female but the person on the end had a distinctly male voice. It transpired they were transgender but at no point in the conversation disclosed this to the call handler so rightly the call handler tried to terminate the call for data protection reasons.

The fact they were trans only came out at the formal complaint stage.

OchEyeTheNoo - great tip! I've just tried that. It works!

Well, DH has just phoned me to say he's spoken to DVLa. It was the same woman :)

I might have to start a new topic for this but let's try here.

DH is european, has lived here 20+ years and has old style driving licence. He thinks it's a good idea to get a new style licence and update address but DVLA say he must send in his passport.

He can't do this. He travels all the time. There must be another way. What is it?

Go into the dvla office.

It's several hundred miles away (Swansea) and she told us that nothing can be guaranteed for same day!

Evabee out of interest did you remember to use DH's accent?

What's an internal customer, Massivetonsil?

Don't say one that you've eaten, because that's just silly.

OchAye - och aye!

Someone from inside the company but a different department and/or partner organisation - or it is for our company

How about a notarised copy of his passport? If there's a notary near his office he could nip out at lunch, it would not take long.

trilbydoll - apparently it must be the original passport.

Day trip to Swansea it is then!