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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.
The guy runs an online business without having any real world contact information available? It's pretty common for sites lacking this information to fail a bank's compliance check.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I guess it's up to a bank to decide who to do business with, but this is pretty crazy.
OK, I suppose they could not let somebody open an account or force their account closed. But no I don't think they legally get to lock the person's access to their own money.
Isn't CitiBank the bunch who decided they can freeze anybodies account for seven days, anytime they decide to?
Fine fellows to do business with.
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.
Bank does something inexplicable and/or dumb. Film at 11. They already unblocked the account and are doing a "review" of the site apparently. This will probably amount to nothing and they'll simply leave the account open. Wake me if something interesting happens.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
What's wrong with being a webcartoonist?
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
That's fine and dandy, but it's still not news for nerds.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
FIVE YEARS LATER:
Hmm, come to think of it, there hasn't been ANY new scandals about CitiBank for the past half decade. I guess they cleaned up their act, so they're probably safe to bank with now.
We only know what we know because it's something we see mentioned over and over again. Stop talking about it, and people will think things changed - or worse, new players in the game (ie. teenagers growing up) won't know there's a problem.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
A 4 page blog that appears to be new gets free hits for a non-issue, news at Eleven!
Any more.
Interestingly. The UK courts many many years ago decided you were loaning the money to them and therefore was theirs to do with as they wished. What the bank does is create a book keeping entry and assigns that to you. I guess you could try to describe that as your money.
Deleted
I really don't understand why anyone would bank with a big corporate bank instead of a credit union.
FDIC
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
NCUA?
NCUA : credit unions :: FDIC : banks
not a good reason
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Couldn't they just have modded them "-1 Troll"? :-)
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.
I quit going to credit unions because I got the worst service at the three I've tried. Terrible customer service, even with medium sized accounts (20-60k), terrible people working there, few ATMs, etc.
I find I get way better service at big banks like Wells Fargo or US Bank.
From TFA: "I promise you that if we do not get a good response to this on Thursday we are moving our bank account to a bank that respects and appreciates our business."
Yeah good luck with that. If a bank dumps you for what they decide to be 'questionable conduct', they usually communicate that with other banks. I would doubt he could get an account with anything other than a small community bank now...not that that's a bad thing.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I have a bunch of bank accounts and citibank (the largest of the ones I use) definitely has the best website. Maybe I won't use them when I want to take out a loan or do some other activity where I would prefer to interact with a banker but for some online juggling of money they work great, especially since they are the only account I have that is able to initiate a "next day" ACH transfer to or from any of my other accounts (all my other accounts can only do standard 3-day ACH transfers if they support online external transfers at all).
Come to think of it, in the last couple of years when I have called citibank I have had remarkably short hold times and helpful, english speaking operators (most recently readily refunding a $39 fee without even asking why I thought they should remove it).
Of course this article is really about business accounts which are a completely different arena...I actually wouldn't be surprised if banks frequently reject business customers
Bottles.
If you do not want to do business with someone there are better ways of handling this than locking someone's account without telling them.
The conspiracy theory nut in me wonders if there was the company CEO's buddy in CitiBank who was willing to part with their job in exchange for doing this. I mean, this is a godsend to a yet another social network site doomed to failure - to create news outrage among its target audience weeks before launch - you bet every gay rights group will be talking about this. You can't pay enough for this sort of a publicity.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
This is NOT story about some "little person" who gets his/here account cancelled. This is a story about bank censoring business because some one with power to cancel account does not like what this particular business doing. It does not matter what kind of business it is. The question is, unless business does something illegal, how is it bank's business to pass judgement?
Really? I've had nothing but bad customer service from big banks, credit unions treat me like family. But the main thing is, big banks nickel and dime you to death trying to make a profit. Any profit made by a CU is split equitably between the owners, i.e., the customers, so they have no motive to screw you over financially like corporate banks do. With a corporate bank, you are paying them for them to lend out your money for their own profit. That seems pretty damn dumb to me, but to each their own, I guess.
As for the ATM issue, most CUs are a part of the CUanywhere network, and share ATMs without charging fees to other CU customers.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I went to their blog, they just seem to sell t-shirts with the name of their site on them. Did anyone find any content that could be considered questionable? I was going to say "porn makers use banks too", but maybe they rape babies or something and I missed it.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
because "we" DON'T know, for values of "we" outside the slashdot club
this is wide-open website, not a club with established agreements. as a media mouthpiece, slashdot has influence beyond the gated community of committed readers. this story is now amplified and continues to spread. that's a good thing
so these kinds of stories will never, and should never stop, as long as human beings are reading here and as long as they feel outraged at injustice, no matter how slight
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is obviously a blatant attempt at advertising a small, obscure blog with no obvious purpose but to promote itself. Although it may be the first time I can ever recall a gay website being promoted this way here. Although a lot of us gays are geeks, the vast majority of geeks (like the general population) are straight. So a rather puzzling place to be marketing a gay website. Worst part is that I can't actually figure out why this Fabulis blog even exists. It seems to be selling branded merchandise and nothing else. And also show that gay guys can't speel, an emplacation I vary much resent.
CUs I had bad experiences with were, one in South Dakota in the early 90s, one in Colorado in the mid 90s, and two in Oregon from 99-2004. Colorado and Oregon experiences are my three bad ones.
My credit union, NMEFCU, has an absolutely amazing web site. What credit union web sites did you look at before you arrived at the conclusion that they wouldn't work for you?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
there were at least 2 or 3 other banks out there who offer these things called "checking accounts" to all kinds of businesses.
"I find I get way better service at big banks like Wells Fargo"
I caught Wells Fargo restructuring my payments SIX SEPARATE TIMES in order to charge me with overdraft fees.
Plus wells Fargo has sued itself - you bank with WF you're a complete fucking moron.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I suppose there are bad CUs out there, but the amount of bad customer service, not to mention the nickel and diming to death I've gotten from corporate banks, is just astounding.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I canceled my Citibank account for the same reason.
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
when did Paypal buy Citibank?
I quit going to credit unions because I got the worst service at the three I've tried. Terrible customer service, even with medium sized accounts (20-60k), terrible people working there, few ATMs, etc.
I find I get way better service at big banks like Wells Fargo or US Bank.
I've had just the opposite experience. So the point to our two provincialist arguments is, what? Right, non-existent. On the other hand, the business practices of the two institutions (banks and credit unions) are a measurable quantity, and the credit unions win hands down, in most cases. We've recently moved some of our accounts to a local bank and have found the customer service, features, and business practices that leave us with a clear conscience, so there are cases where a bank is a good choice, just not any of the major ones.
I see you're not experienced with citibank.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Same here. I looked at joining the credit union that is loosely affiliated with my employer, when I started working here, and again when I was looking at buying a house, and decided against it both times. The credit union has a smaller number of branches, further from where I live. The online banking options are poor compared to my existing bank, which would force me to physically go to the bank more often, which in turn has worse hours than a regular bank. And from what my office-mate tells me the service is worse - the lines at the credit union are always longer than the bank and they constantly make mistakes and then try to turn around and blame him. At my normal bank I get treated like a number, but the bank is quite efficient and adept at dealing with numbers.
The number of ATMs is about the same since they pooled together with the "CU Anytime" ATMs. The interest rates for saving accounts and mortgages are a better deal than I could get from my bank, but not as good as I can get from financial institutions that specialize on those things. As for the nickel and dimeing - my bank has never charged me any fees related to my accounts since I opened 13 years ago (then Norwest, now WellsFargo), except overdraft fees, which are to be expected.
There are a couple of credit unions which I have been told are good, but they limit their membership, like the state employees credit union.
Here's a good reason. Was going on a three day weekend holiday with the family. We had accidentally overdrawn the account by about $10 on Thursday. On Friday the payroll was automatically deposited. On Friday evening, all packed up and heading to the mountains we stop at the ATM to get some cash for the trip. Nope. They automatically lock your card if you are overdrawn and do NOT unlock it even after you fix that problem until you call them up. Except you can't call them up after hours, they don't have a 24 hour customer service line. And because they are a credit union, you can't call them on Saturday, either. We could not unlock the ATM card until Tuesday morning, so they completely ruined our entire holiday over a $10 overdraft that was immediately fixed. F*ck credit unions.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Was it ever our money? Isn't this the basis of banking as a business since it was conceived? Banks borrow money from us at a low rate and loan it out to others at a higher rate. In the USA, the FDIC exists to give consumers confidence that deposits are guaranteed, to a certain $ amount, if the bank ever failed. If someone expects to get the same exact notes or bills deposited back from the bank they should be using a safe deposit box.
The manifest absurdity of it is too obvious to require explanation
Honestly, I have always opened accounts at big corporate banks because I'm in a phase in my life where I'm moving and traveling a lot, and there's a better chance a big bank will have branches and ATMs the next place I go. When I'm more settled I'll probably prefer something more local.
The large banks have also served me incredibly well overseas...I can't think of anywhere I have gone where I wasn't able to find an ATM belonging to one of my international banks (or their fee-less partners). I don't mean to belittle the importance of small banks and credit unions...last time my dad had a disagreement with his credit union (of which he is now one of their oldest customers for his business and personal accounts), he was called on personally by the president to fix his problem--that certainly will never happen at citi. Their online features sure don't compare though, and neither does their reach/convenience (He still has to go to the physical location to make a deposit...I just have to find an ATM belonging to one of my banks).
The beauty is that you can have as many bank relationships as you want...you don't have to use citibank for your auto loan just because you have a checking account with them and you don't have to set up automatic payments and transfers with a bank whose system can't figure out biweekly periods (you'd be surprised...)
Bottles.
Yep, both Credit Union and Bank accounts are insured up to $250,000.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Assuming that the problem is even real, or even related to content (I have my doubts, because this seems like a great marketing ploy)... Is it because it's a gay site or because it's a "hookup" site? As i read the front page, this is about meeting someone for a "hookup". From what I've heard, postings in such forums are often deceptive and/or fronts for other sorts of "opportunities". If that's the case, Citibank might legitimately wonder whether this is a good business for them to be involved with, if only because of the opportunity for chargebacks.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
...why anyone would want to bank with Citi in the first place is beyond sanity?
Do they love Robert Rubin and the dissolution of the American economy? Do they love the serf-creation machine of Goldman Sachs, JPMOrgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citi and BofA?
Do they love all that energy/oil speculation to raise everyone's prices at Citi's Phibro?
And because they are a credit union, you can't call them on Saturday, either. We could not unlock the ATM card until Tuesday morning, so they completely ruined our entire holiday over a $10 overdraft that was immediately fixed. F*ck credit unions.
You're making a composition error here. These are policies of a particular credit union, not all credit unions.
I happen to us a local bank with Saturday morning hours. I can't see the advantage of a big bank. On a 6-sigma trip I might rack up $20 in ATM fees. That's so insignificant compared with bad service at a bank.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
These are my rules of a bank that I will not have business with:
These are all highly immoral and in my eyes illegal concepts.
Which is why I will found my own gold/silver-based currency and bank for my big game project, and legally allow using it outside of the game. (But will disallow any of the above behaviors.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
And that $250,000 amount the FDIC insures is set to drop back down to $100K. Not so with NCUA.
Agreed. Journalism 101 teaches that no story exists unless their are two sources. Otherwise, it goes on the Opinion page.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
A few minutes ago I went to news.google.com and ran into this story. There are over a dozen articles covering this issue so are just linked from the front of googles news page. Then I came to /. and noticed the same story. I find that a big amusing actually.
What makes this a bit more news worthy is two things. One is the social issue that seems to very clearly be that someone at Citibank does not like a gay themed web site. Two is who is the CEO and author of the blog in question.
One of the other articles I read has a pretty good description:
Now, in case you don't know Goldberg: he's an accomplished Internet entrepreneur, who had stints at the White House, AOL and T-Mobile under his belt before founding Jobster (and raising more than $50 million for the startup) and after that socialmedian (which he sold to Xing in December 2008).
For his latest startup fabulis, Goldberg has raised $625k in seed funding from the likes of Washington Post and Venture Partner at Mayfield Fund Allen Morgan, and essentially aims to become the leading social network and lifestyle website for homosexual men.
Here is the source article:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/25/does-citibank-suffer-from-homophobia-or-just-a-general-dislike-for-startups/
Without each person complaining, how does one spot the "unofficial" corporate policy?
Why does anyone use Citibank?
Quirky. I've had the best service ever with the credit union I'm with.
I can find ATMs everywhere.
Even when I'm not in my home state, I usually can run into an ATM that's supported by my CU to get free withdrawals (found that out on a trip to Minnesota, US, and again on a trip to Georgia, US).
I recently needed a loan to get my vehicle back after needing emergency repairs.
I called them on a Tuesday afternoon.
On Wednesday morning, the money I needed to pick up my vehicle was in my account and ready to go.
I didn't have to go do any paperwork or anything special. I just called.
I haven't paid any BS fees. The few times I actually managed an overdraft, I was charged the overdraft fee and that's it. I couldn't deposit anything for two weeks, but there were no fees other than that one overdraft.
This is unlike what has happened to a good friend of mine: He managed to overdraft by 47 cents (an automated transfer for something hit right after paying rent, heh).
The bank charged him for the overdraft, which is right and fine, albeit $40 is a pretty steep overdraft charge.
Then a week later, they hit him for a 'service fee' for the overdraft ($35).
A week after that, they hit him again for another 'service fee' ($35 again).
As a result, he gets to pay over $100 for overdrafting by 47 cents with a regular bank.
My CU would have charged him $29 for the same thing. That's it.
The few banks I've tried have pretty much scared me off with their fee schedules.
One of these days, I am going to flip out. When I flip out, I'll be back in five minutes.
This isn't a blog. It is a large, well financed gay dating site who's CEO happens to be blogging about his bank's supposed issues with his site's 'objectionable content' a week before the site goes live.
No tangents here, just a dearth of complete information. You see, this fellow has been pimping this story all over the place, and I'd read it a few hours before, linked from a different site. I looked into the fabulis site and found out what it is, and that it is about to go live, and THAT is what made me suspicious. The timing is just a little too pat.
Again, it is not whether the bank knows how to contact this guy. He is about to open a very large online dating site, but there is no real live address or telephone number on the site. The bank is just worried about charge-backs.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The UK courts many many years ago decided you were loaning the money to them and therefore was theirs to do with as they wished
It's a little bit more complicated than this. They can invest the money in any way that they like - even in companies that you disapprove of - but they are still legally required to repay it on demand or declare bankruptcy. This counts even in cases of a bank error in your favour: they can not remove money from your account (which, as you say, isn't really money, just a value tracking the amount that they owe you), but if they ask nicely and you say no then expect all future dealings with any bank to be very, very, difficult.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
About 10 years ago I moved my checking and savings to a local credit union. A couple of years later I moved my last credit card to them as well. I've watched them like a hawk and have never caught them in any shenanigans. I would highly recommend firing your... shitty... bank and moving your funds to someone a bit more local.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Okay. Here is my theory: This is a web site that sells things. The bank account in question is the corporate account. As part of the bank's standard checklist for new accounts of new online businesses, they require that the site have real world, brick and mortar contact information so that, if there are any problems with billing, the customers will find it easier to contact the business in person or by phone, rather than bugging the bank, canceling the charges on their cards, and so forth.
The site is about to go live, so the bank checked the site for compliance. They said, "You need contact info online, we're shutting down your payment processing until you get that done, as it states in the contract you signed with us." But that isn't good publicity. It's very easy to instead intentionally miss-hear that as, "We object to your content." Get it? The contact info is the content, and the bank objects to it not being there. It isn't even a lie. And it makes good publicity.
And you know what? It seems to have worked. And more power to them. The Internet is woefully short on gay hookup sites. None of my gay friends are putting the stank on the hangdown nearly as often as they'd like to, the poor things.
You see, that kind of casual dishonesty is fucking par for the course for corporations, it's so common it's hard to even really see it as objectionable. Corporations are going to trick you, always, it's a fact of life. I'm just over here going "Aaahh! Aaah! Good one, good one, you almost got me!" Sheesh.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Get every shirtless gay man in tight pants & cross dresser to stand outside of Citibanks nation wide dancing with bumper stickers on their crotch saying "Questionable Content."
I'm not saying that no one should complain. I'm saying that media outlets that highlight every single complaint, valid or not, minor or not, create the opposite perception identified in the grandparent: Instead of thinking a corporation is an angel, we think it's the devil himself, because we're fed a diet of anger and corporate evil. Neither is generally accurate.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Assuming that the problem is even real, or even related to content (I have my doubts, because this seems like a great marketing ploy)...
Citi's Mea Culpa
Stripping back the address to "www." instead of "blog." renders....
And so I have to ask....is CmdrTaco, or a friend, an investor? Because this is obviously a ploy for attention to a brand new web business.
I mean, what's more current than dissing banks? And Citi's a zombie, so definitely a target....this is an obvious media ploy.
i demand a xkcd of this.
Visa/Mastercard/Discover picks who owes what. Winning and losing a dispute is based on their rules. Loser eats it, unless the loser vanishes, then the bank eats it. If the dispute is ancient and the customer is beyond their rights period for the time needed to dispute the transaction, the customer eats it.
I'm pretty sure it was a link from a dairy on dailykos. Feel free to go look it up there.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
A Citibank spokesman tells The Reg that the situation has "nothing to do" with the content of the Fabulis site. "Any suggestions that this was the case were incorrect," he says. But he also says that company reserves the right to not open an account or close it if there's illegal or discriminatory content on its website. "We're required by law to do our due diligence to understand the nature of a business that wants an account."
From the Register story here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/26/citibank_and_fabulis/
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I'm not trying to convince anyone, I don't think we have enough information to decide for sure what's going on, I'm just advocating skepticism. If you read that story, you will see that Citibank has been accused of this sort of thing before, so at this point it's a he said/she said kind of deal.
It wouldn't surprise me to find Citibank has homophobes working for them. It also wouldn't surprise me to find the CEO of a new website stretched the truth for the sake of publicity.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton