I've seen worse apologies, but the weaselly wording still leaves a bad taste in my mouth:<p>He learned of "the challenges" fabulis faced.<p>He apologizes for the "confusion about the status" of the account.<p>He regrets the "unintended message" that his employees "may have" conveyed.<p>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.
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.<p>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?
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.<p>I'd like to say that Citi's callout of LGBT support was smart. The gay community and their supporters is a <i>massive</i> 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.
Any word on which posts/content were deemed inappropriate by the compliance officer?<p>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.
I'm betting that this whole mess has been great for fabulis overall.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Wait wat?<p>Citibank is sponsoring free motels?