Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

I’m a little bit annoyed at Target (the physical store, not target.com) right now, because an item I bought there a few weeks ago came not-as-pictured. I bought two of these Wire Cube Organizers for $20 or so. One of them was great, and came as it should. The other one was missing the plastic bits that held it together entirely!

TARGET WHAAA YOU SUCK!?!?!?

You can’t do anything without these plastic bits.

So I sent an opening email to Target guest services:

01/09/11 19:06:13
Comments: I bought one of these (link) at a Target the other day. When I opened the box, it had the wire frames, but none of the plastic parts which hold them together.

I got a response back asking for more information:

Dear Elliott Back,

I’m sorry for the trouble you had with the wire cube shelving system which you’ve recently purchased.

We’d still like to help you out, but we aren’t able to determine if the item has been purchased from Target.com or not. Please write back to us with the information listed using the link below.

-Whether the item was purchased at Target.com or in a Target store
-Order number (You can find it on the packing slip)
-Name or e-mail address of the person who placed the order

We look forward to hearing from you!

I sent back that I had bought it at a physical target, and my information was passed along to guest.relations@target.com, who wrote back:

Dear Elliott Black, oops! The message we received came in scrambled and unreadable. To make sure we have a chance to respond to your question or concern, would you please re-send your original message?

So I reiterate the situation:

I bought one of these at a Target the other day (link). When I opened the box, it had the wire frames, but none of the plastic parts
which hold them together. I was hoping you could send some of the plastic bits?

I can provide a photo of the box & contents if that helps you out.

A different rep wrote back that they couldn’t help me out:

Dear Elliott Black:

Thanks for sharing your comments with us about the Wire Cube Shelving System you purchased at Target. I know it’s frustrating when an item doesn’t work out for you due to missing parts. I’m sorry we aren’t able to provide any manufacturer information about this Wire Cube Shelving System and unable to request parts.

We work with lots of manufacturers to offer you a unique variety of merchandise. Because of our relationship with this manufacturer, we need to follow the guidelines of our return policy, which requires a valid receipt for all returns and exchanges.

We may be able to return or exchange your item so please don’t hesitate to contact Target.com if you purchased it online or your local Target store if bought there. Please accept my apologies for any disappointment this has caused. Hearing about your experience is important to us, and I’ll be sure to share your comments with our Merchandising and Buying teams.

I don’t live near a physical target, and I didn’t keep the receipt (my bad, I suppose). So I wrote back “I live in NYC , so I don’t believe I have a local target?” and I have yet to hear from them. The 50% hit rate on their crappy wireframe shelves is something I should factor into their pricing if I visit again in the future. It’s really too bad; the nearest Target is an hour away in New Jersey and not worth the time of going over there and replacing / buying a new one. Maybe a miracle will happen and their customer service send me a refund, or better yet, a new wireframe shelving unit, avec plastic parts?

Doubtful, I’m convinced Target sucks.

I came across PeopleSoft Hinders Review of Aid Applications, an article describing how my Alma Mater’s implementation of Peoplesoft is causing delays in processing financial aid applications, which contains an amazing quote:

12 days after classes started, about 750 students’ financial aid applications are still being processed due to complications from the implementation of PeopleSoft. PeopleSoft replaced JustTheFacts software and now manages students’ personal, academic, bursar and financial aid information.

“The PeopleSoft system is much more labor-intensive than our previous financial system,” stated Davis. “We estimate that it takes three to four times longer to review and process a financial aid application in PeopleSoft than it did in our former financial aid system.”

Well, “This can’t be that bad,” I thought and headed over to the student management system to check it out for myself. Then, I got hit by an ancient-looking ugly, non-functional GUI:

Clicking on any of the links that might interest me (grades, transcripts, etc) led me to the following “nice pages”:

The back/forward buttons don’t work

Whoah, where did this come from?

Another random error

Yep, Peoplesoft definitely sucks. And, I don’t blame Cornell for it–except for making the original bad decision to migrate from a working, if not archaic, system. Nay, I blame Peoplesoft (recently rebranded as Oracle Peoplesoft. Here’s some juicy quotes from other IT professionals:

• “It’s a horribly designed piece of crap. They don’t use referential integrity *and* they duplicate data all over the place in the database. Their UI is like something out of Windows 1.0 days.” – Joel on Software
• “It is the single worst example of web-based software I have ever seen. Ever.” – Jason
• “It’s web browsing in the 19th century. Lots of backing up and clunky navigation menus laden with far too much non-intuitive information.” – Dee-Rob
• “the syntax, which seemed arcane at best and totally unusable at worst” – John

A cute Facebook group, Cornell must be held accountable for Peoplesoft issues, and another Cornell story, New CoursEnroll Software Causes Distress, Difficulties, explains how the initial rollout was also fraught with difficulties:

Yeh said that although the system was marked by a number of problems, nearly 3,200 students out of the approximately 3,700 who needed to enroll were able to do so successfully. Course requests that were not approved before the system went down were entered into the system automatically.

[T]he preparation for the replacement began back in 1995 when Cornell administrators began watching how other schools used PeopleSoft. Cornell and company began to develop the new program together. Yeh did not know how expensive the program was to develop.

The moral of the story? Sometimes rolling your own software is better than buying and adapting. Especially for giant applications.

If you’re an American, or otherwise living in the USA, stories like That Money Is GUILTY! should make you extremely angry:

Deputy Chris Engel, 25, had been on the job just two weeks when a routine traffic stop Dec. 20 turned into the biggest cash seizure the Nebraska county has ever seen. The driver’s story didn’t add up, Engel said, so he did a little more investigating. The driver was not arrested — or even ticketed for going 10 mph over the 75 mph speed limit. (He was warned.) But the investigation is ongoing, Engel said. The Nebraska State Patrol and the Drug Enforcement Agency are assisting in the investigation.

“Chris is a very aggressive young deputy,” Hanson said. Investigators don’t know if they will be able to connect the money to a drug operation, Hanson said, but the important work already has been done. “The big thing is he grabbed 69 (thousand dollars) and took it away from them,” Hanson said of the money seized. “That’s going right straight to the heart of the matter.”

Thanks to America’s asset forfeiture laws, Police can and will take your property from you if they want to, or suspect they can. Usually this occurs when carrying large amounts of cash under the assumption that anyone carrying a large amount of cash must be guilty of a crime. The legal proceedings are dubious, as the Federal government brings a civil case against your seized cash:

The US Government sues the item of property, not the person; the owner is effectively a third party claimant. Once the government establishes probable cause that the property is subject to forfeiture, the owner must prove on a “preponderance of the evidence” that it is not.

On a practical level, the law enforcement agents making the seizures are either (a) funding their departments or (b) acquiring equity that will personally benefit them, a clear conflict of interest between revenue generating activities and lawfulness. This came from the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), passed by Congress in 1970, which sought to reduce crime by eliminating its financial motivations. For example, in the case of a drug dealer, RICO would let police take his pimped out car, stacks of cash, and other such business accessories, making it unprofitable and embarrassing to be in that profession.

The Mesa Tribune did an analysis of the RICO cases filed in Arizona between January 1990 to November 1993. The nine local agencies it analyzed were the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, the D.P.S. (Department of Public Safety), the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, and the Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Tempe police departments:

• Nearly three-fourths of the people who lose property in forfeiture cases are never charged with a crime.
• About two-thirds of the people who had property seized had no criminal records in Maricopa County.
• One of every six people whose property was seized was an uninvolved third party who was not even present when the property was taken. Typically these were parents, siblings, boyfriends, or girlfriends who entrusted their cars or other property to someone who was arrested on a narcotics-related charge.
• More than $4 million in cash – 54.8% of that taken – was seized from people who were never charged with a crime.
• Of the more than 2,400 people whose property was seized, only one in five was ultimately convicted.
• Only one in 20 went to prison.
• One in 40 went to prison for five years or more, even though those are the people most likely to be the kingpins at which the law is aimed.
• Despite the law’s stated aim of breaking wealthy crime organizations, the average cash seizure is $3,063.
• According to the Mesa Tribune study, the nine agencies raised $26.5 million in that time period. Typically, forfeiture profits are divided among the agencies that contributed to the case.

Once your equity has been taken from you, it’s your own responsibility to sue to get it back. Probably, you won’t even be charged with a crime, just presumed to be guilty of criminal activity before being proved so. To show “innocent ownership” in court, according to Practical Freedom, you must demonstrate all of the following:

1. The person acquired an interest in the property before or during the criminal act.
2. The property was acquired legally.
3. The owner did not or could not have known of the illegal activity.
4. The owner was not married to the person committing the illegal act.

When is someone going to sue the government and get this turned around? Asset forfeiture makes sense when it is applied after the judgment of guilt, not before, and inside the usual limitation and restrictions of law.