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Citibank Cancels Bank Account of Objectionable Blogger
Keith found this story about Citibank blocking a website's bank account after deciding that the site's blog contained questionable content. I guess it's up to a bank to decide whom to do business with, but this is pretty crazy.
You post one side of some obscure blog's events, and this is front page news?!! Of course there must be more details to this, but we wouldn't get it from this lame submission.
I can't even see how this issue is really relevant to nerds here. There's no tech connection, no connection to anything really.
It could as well be a marketing ploy to get more eyeballs to the website. Did this really (I mean really???) happen. Can someone independent confirm this?
Not that it is a tech story anyways.
I really don't understand why anyone would bank with a big corporate bank instead of a credit union.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Surely there's a balance to be struck between flooding the Internet with minor ragefilter mishaps and real misconduct--organizations, especially large ones, are imperfect and make mistakes. A good place to draw a line would be whether or not more than one person is affected, and a bit of editorial judgment on whether it's a single incident or a corporate policy.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
He said they said that. Would it be a story if he said, "I forgot to put my contact info on my site, and the bank shut down my account for 24 hours while I settled things?" I'm not saying the guy is definitely lying, but there is a strong motive for him to do so.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
While you may be right, the end result of all of this is a very large amount of publicity for this site. Call me cynical, but anytime I see some website whining about some supposed injustice done to them, I think 'shameless self promotion.'
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Look, I'm just explaining how banks work. If you have an online business, you need a real world address and telephone number on your site.
What if you have an offline business?
Plenty of posts so far have gone back and forth between "he said she said" and "compliance yadda yadda yadda". But it seems no one has actually pointed out how this relates to the "real" world.
I can go down to my bank tomorrow and get a small business checking account with zero "compliance" checks involved (other than proof that I really exist). I can, at the same time (for a monthly plus various per-use fees), sign up to have my bank act as a payment processor so I can accept credit cards from my hypothetical customers.
I conspicuously don't need a website to do any of that. I don't need to put up a sign in front of my business with contact info; I don't need to prove that I have a listing in the phone book; I don't need to demonstrate that I have an advertising budget to make the world aware of me. They simply don't care. I have an account, they hold my money for me. Simple as that.
The bank needs to know that your customers will have a way to contact you in the real world to resolve disputes, otherwise the bank fears it will have to eat the costs of said disputes.
In what universe do banks ever eat the cost of disputes? Okay, they may have some overhead for dealing with disputes (and even that usually gets passed on to their direct customer), but in the end they pick who owes what and call it good. "Eating it" never even enters their consideration.
To open the account as a business account, sure. But after that, unless you're suspected of fraud, they don't ( and probably shouldn't) give a fuck.
Having opened 3 small business accounts in the last 15 years, I can tell you that if anyone called my bank to complain that they couldn't get in touch with me to "resolve a dispute" they would promptly be told "Please seek legal counsel, and is there anything else I can help you with? No, then my name is Ingrid, and thank you for calling Heartless Bank and have a wonderful day".
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Yes, its also harder to scam people in real life than it is on a website. Its harder to cut and run when you actually do have a storefront that people come into and see your face. Where the landlord knows you. Or where people come see your hotdog cart and buy hotdogs from you in front of the hardware store. Banks are far easier when someone walks in and askes about getting a CC reader because in most cases some guy is going to bring it to your store and 'install' it for you so they've established you've invested some effort at a minimum and people are going to have seen you and can describe you.
Physical interaction with the person you're ripping off is a lot harder than scamming them on a website while you're in the Ukraine. A website requires nothing more than a well placed adword to rip someone off. All they'll have is a number to track the scam with, and once that number crosses enough lines on maps and network borders, its impossible to make heads or tails of.
Having a phone number also makes you a little easier to track, it means you've established a presence and left more traces with someone else. Something that even if faked will still make it easier to track you down in every case but the CIA trying to rip you off.
You're correct, a website storefront is entirely different than a brick and mortor store front, and they are treated differently.
Are you suggesting that these two entirely different mediums be treated the identically in every way? Do you want sales tax on online purchases charged the same way as sales tax on purchases in brick and mortor stores?
Offline businesses are treated differently than online businesses. Its well known, its intentional and its intelligent, suggesting they be treated the are the same or should be treated the same shows pure ignorance of the subject at hand.
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