Some people jumped to Mt Gox's defense, claiming that 14-21 days for wire transfers were "acceptable".
Anyone who did this is naive, and idiot, or a troll.
As a point of example. Yesterday I pulled $80K from my Roth IRA for some much needed capital expansion. I realized it had been so long since I sent a wire from that account it had the wrong bank info. Crap that is going to cause some delays. I updated the bank info, sent the wire (no fee BTW) and the funds cleared in my checking account in .... 3 .... hours.
The whole point of a wire in INSTANT funds. A wire which takes 14 days is just stupid. You could print a check, mail it across the world, and deposit it, and wait for it to clear in less than 14 days.
I'm guessing this was a domestic wire transfer and both the source and destination of funds were known as well as the originating and receiving institution having adequate identity verification information on you. It's likely that neither the originating or receiving institution were designated "high risk" and you may very well be classified as a low risk customer.
The game changes when you're talking about businesses like exchanges, which are regarded as being high risk in and of themselves, sending many wires to unrelated people in countries all over the world, many of which are regarded as "high risk" due to high levels of money laundering, drug trafficking, being tax havens, and generally being non-compliant with FATF recommendations. Because users are customers of the exchange and not the bank, the burden of proof that the transactions are legitimate falls on the exchanges. Banks are reluctant to let questionable wire transfers go through without challenge because there have been significant fines levied against financial institutions which have done that in the past - Wachovia is probably the best known example, but Western Union and Ocean Bank have also been fined for inadequate KYC/transaction monitoring.
