Reaching the citi limits (citi apologizes to fabulis) | Hacker News Reader

Reaching the citi limits (citi apologizes to fabulis)

blog.fabulis.com

30 pointsbetashop15 comments

I've seen worse apologies, but the weaselly wording still leaves a bad taste in my mouth:

He learned of "the challenges" fabulis faced.

He apologizes for the "confusion about the status" of the account.

He regrets the "unintended message" that his employees "may have" conveyed.

That's weaselly. I know he has to cover the company's ass, but the fact is that the "challenge" was that one or more citi employees are homophobic shits who should be removed from a position that gives them this sort of authority now that they've demonstrated their lack of good judgment in this area.

Yeah, in particular, Citi made it very unclear if "the challenges" Fabulis faced were in fact related to its blog postings, and what Citi's policy on that is. Was that merely a misunderstanding and the account was suspended for reasons unrelated to a blog? Was it suspended due to the blog but by an employee not acting in line with Citi policy? Or was there a Citi policy on that, and if so, has it been changed?

It seems to have worked out for Fabulis (due in no small part, I expect, to the publicity), but they haven't given enough information for me to be confident that the root problem was solved.

I agree, this reminds me of just how good WordPress' apology was recently when they had downtime:

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/wp-com-downtime-summ...

Now there's some non-weasely, honest-to-goodness apologisin'.

I understand your anger, but this is a good, well-written apology, albeit done in a formal style. Fabulis may or may not accept it, but it's hardly like Citi's blowing them off.

Bill Brown (the Citibank manager) made pretty strong statements like "I assure you that Citi is committed to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities". There's not a lot of wiggle room there.

As a piece of corporate communications, it's nicely done. He openly addressed all of the customer's concerns, without immediately throwing one of his employees under the bus or being defensive. That's a delicate dance.

> He openly addressed all of the customer's concerns, without immediately throwing one of his employees under the bus or being defensive. That's a delicate dance.

Yes, that's a delicate dance, but it assumes that not throwing an employee under the bus is appropriate.

If an employee does something wrong, throwing them under the bus may, or may not, be appropriate. Citi has made its decision, but that decision doesn't bind us. We're free to use that decision to judge Citi.

Citi is within its rights to make sure that we don't know what it did about this employee. However, that secrecy means we're free to assume what we'd like about what they did, or didn't, do.

Vagueness could result from the writer of the apology not knowing the exact details of who did what or not being able to discuss the details. (Example: internal investigation and company rules don't allow discussion)

Alternately, weasel words could simply be the language this guy speaks all day and didn't think to be more clear. (Not to excuse the weaseliness.)

To be fair, this is common business writing. I don't think people realize they are being so indirect because being direct sounds crass and impolite. It takes a good writer to clearly document a situation and properly apologize; most business people are just not good writers.

So I would chalk this up to ignorance, not malice. It's clear that Citi is upset that they treated a customer this way, and that they want to indicate this to their client. That's all I would ask for.

I would be motivated to keep my business with Citi, if only because I now have a higher-level contact in case the underlings mess something up again. I think it's clear that this guy cares... but maybe I am too nice.

This is such a bullshit, CYA response. He doesn't in any way address the issue that Citibank, or any one of its employees, can and will freeze any of its customers' cash, for an undetermined length of time, for "noncompliance with standard policies", with absolutely no explanation when it happens.

Until Citibank disclaims any ability to freeze funds unless under court order, they will never have my business. What happens the next time it happens to someone who doesn't have quite so easy access to the media or a story so easily seen as blatantly discriminatory?

Banking regulations force big banks to do things like this. If the OP ended up doing something illegal with the account, Citi would be stuck with a big fine and would be out whatever money the OP used. If they made a policy that says, "we will not touch your account without a court order", they would be out of business tomorrow because that is the same as, "we are knowingly going to violate the law." Banks are financially liable to the government if they do not police new accounts aggressively. Banking regulations in the US suck, and this is exactly the unintended consequences that these regulations have. (If you care, google "know your customer".)

(I work at an investment bank as a contractor and had to take a course on detecting consumer banking fraud. Absolutely nothing to do with my line of work, but that's how paranoid the banks are of the government.)

This is great news. Congratulations to Fabulis for getting this resolved, and props to Citi for recognizing a grievous error and moving rapidly to correct it.

I'd like to say that Citi's callout of LGBT support was smart. The gay community and their supporters is a massive group, and quite sensitive to this kind of bullshit. We're also in activist mode right now, so being perceived as anti-gay can be rather costly for a big business.

While I agree with you, I don't think this situation should be considered resolved. People have a tendency to see businesses like Citi as one person or entity, as in, "Well, Citi screwed up royally, but then later they called back to apologize." This isn't what happened. Three individuals who were Citi employees engaged in discriminatory business practices, and then a fourth individual chimed into apologize and clarify Citi's official position.

The first step in a situation like this is to hold Citi, the business, accountable for its actions. This step is done - they have responded claiming that this is not standard practice, and apologized for the inconvenience.

The next step should be to hold the people responsible for this accountable, individually. Fabulis should demand a written apology and full explanation of what transpired from each of the employees who told them the account was frozen for "objectionable blog content." If a reasonable explanation cannot be produced, they should be fired.

IMHO, until the individuals who engaged in these practices are held personally accountable, Citi should not be considered "off the hook." While their official policy may be honorable, their practices will not change unless they send a strong message to their employees that this type of action is utterly unacceptable.

Any word on which posts/content were deemed inappropriate by the compliance officer?

All in all, this is probably a net win for this little startup. They got tons of great free PR thanks to Citi's incompetence, and it was resolved quickly enough that Fabulis probably suffered no real damage from the incident. A lot more people are now familiar with their site and brand than would have been otherwise. It'd probably behoove them to hurry up and launch their site before the mindshare fades away with time.

The real reason to avoid doing business with CitiBank is that they are probably insolvent.

I'm betting that this whole mess has been great for fabulis overall.

Sure, they were inconvenienced and annoyed for a day or two, but it generated lots of publicity for their startup, not to mention lots of people linking to their site.

At the end of the day, I think the only loser here is Citi.. at least I hope that's the case.

> In fact, this week Citi has announced the financing for the True Colors Residence, a housing facility for homeless GLBT youth in New York City.

Wait wat?

Citibank is sponsoring free motels?

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