“Outside the Horseshoe” reviews top stories of 2006

Jonathan Ahl had WMBD-AM’s Dave Dahl and the Journal Star’s Jennifer Davis on WCBU’s “Outside the Horseshoe” program (listen to an .mp3 of the show) this past Tuesday to review 2006. The six top stories they identified and discussed:

  1. At-large Council Elections — Morris and Grayeb are not seeking reelection, so there is a lot of speculation on who might be filling those positions, and if the other three incumbents will remain.
  2. City Budget — No significant changes from last year, despite having a new council that was supposed to fully staff Fire Station 11 and eliminate the $6/month garbage fee.
  3. Snow — The city wasn’t prepared for the big December 1 snowstorm and did a poor job clearing the city streets. Ahl’s panel decided that it wasn’t any one thing that was to blame (it was a combination of factors), but the council, et. al., are looking for one scapegoat.
  4. Crime — 18 murders in 2006, “Target Peoria” crime forum, surveillance cameras, saturation patrols, and whatever happened to the parental-responsibility ordinance idea?
  5. East Bluff Replacement School — District 150 was, and still is, trying to find a 15-acre site in the East Bluff on which to build a new school to replace/consolidate Glen Oak and White schools.
  6. Civic Center Hotel Controversy — I have to admit, I had almost forgotten about this one. It’s been so “underground,” as Jennifer Davis said, that one wonders whether some back-room deals are being made, or if the idea is being abandoned.

After listening to the show, I have to say the panelists did a good job of covering the big stories of the past year. But there were a couple of stories I was surprised they didn’t cover: the PDC landfill controversy (granted, that was a Peoria County issue, not a city issue, but it was still a big story affecting the city) and the proposed Land Development Code for the Heart of Peoria area (which I think is significant because it’s a huge step forward for the Heart of Peoria Plan, which was adopted by the council in principle, and now will have the chance to be adopted in practice).

And I think they should have had a blogger or two at the table just to round things out. Not necessarily me, although I always have fun on the show, but at least Billy Dennis who has been covering Peoria politics for the blogosphere for a number of years now. After all, it’s people like Billy and me who were named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year this year, right? 😉

Amazon.com charity scam?

FootstoolFor Christmas, my dad got my mom a footstool through Amazon.com (pictured at right). It came in a box with some assembly required — basically, you have to screw the legs on and secure each of them with a screw. Once it was assembled, however, it was only a matter of hours before the legs were wobbly and one leg actually fell off. These legs aren’t coming unscrewed, mind you. The whole assembly is coming out of the frame. Basically, it’s a piece of junk.

So my mom writes to Amazon.com and asks about how to return it for a refund, and she gets this e-mail back from “Amy” in customer service:

Thank you for the reply. What I would like for you to do is donate the item to a charity of your choice in our name which is On The Web Marketing Group and fax over the receipt to me @ [phone number]. Once this is received, we will refund the full amount you paid back to Amazon and they in turn will credit your card back in full. Once again, I do apologize for the inconvenience.

Well, the first mystery was figuring out who “On The Web Marketing Group” was, so I Googled it. According to the “Company Info” tab at http://www.otwmg.com/, “On The Web Marketing Group represents a variety of online companies and handles the customer service, order processing and order fulfillment for these fine companies. The company was started in 1997 and is currently a privately owned corporation founded in the state of Nevada.”

Okay, so they’re evidently a third-party company that takes care of shipping products and servicing customers for a number of on-line retailers including Amazon.com.

The second mystery is, why would any charity want a broken, piece-of-junk footstool? Clearly, they wouldn’t — they’re just going to throw it away. So why donate it to charity? I think we all know the only plausible reason:

It sounds to me like their process is to have their dissatisfied customers pawn off their defective merchandise on unsuspecting charities. That way, instead of throwing away the defective junk and taking a loss (the honest thing to do) they can write it off on their taxes as a donation to charity. The junk still gets thrown away, but no return shipping charges are incurred and they get the tax benefits as if it were a legitimate charitable donation.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark — or, in this case, Nevada. Frankly, I’m shocked and disappointed. And I can’t help but wonder (a) does Amazon.com know of this practice, and (b) is this legal? Anyone else had a similar experience with Amazon.com’s customer service?