MSNBC - Some shoppers find fewer happy returns
As the holiday shopping season gets into full swing, a number of major retailers — including KB Toys and Sports Authority, according to store personnel — are rolling out electronic systems that weigh the number of returns and exchanges a person has made, the dollar value of the items, and the dates of the transactions to decide whether a consumer should be granted another. The systems are designed to catch shoplifters and those who "wardrobe," wearing clothes and then returning them for a full refund........
As more personal information is collected into databases, computers have been handed increasing power to make decisions about our everyday lives. The technological systems aim to solve costly and important business problems, but the proliferation of these "electronic blacklists" has alarmed consumer and privacy advocacy groups who say many databases have incomplete, incorrect or misleading information.
"Technology has made it cheap to do all kinds of surveillance and watch over people and make sure they obey the rules. But when a system makes a mistake, what can you do?" said Richard Smith, an Internet security and privacy consultant.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970 gives consumers rights concerning information used to make decisions about credit, insurance, employment or other services. Other federal laws impose disclosure requirements on information collected by the medical establishment or the financial services industry. But increasingly, companies are creating databases not envisioned by such regulations, and there is debate about which laws, if any, apply.
Peggy Twohig, assistant director of the Division of Financial Practices of the Federal Trade Commission, which administers the Fair Credit Act, said whether a particular information system is covered by it "depends on the particular facts of each system, and can be a complex legal question."
Used more widely
Among the databases being created is one for landlords that purports to list renters who have been evicted. Others claim to identify "known" spammers. St. Louis-based Talx Corp., meanwhile, has compiled more than 100 million employee records that contain names of companies, dates of employment and job titles. More than 1,000 firms, including American Airlines, FedEx Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Kmart Corp., Marriott International Inc., Microsoft Corp. and PepsiCo Inc., make use of the service to speed along the screening process for potential new hires.
But workers worry that some companies, for instance, use the word "inactive" to refer to people who have left the company for any reason; other companies use "terminated," a word that some employees have argued has negative connotations. Perhaps the most common complaint is that job titles are incorrect. One woman, Shelli Isiminger of Dover, Del., said one of her former employers reported that she was a "supervisor" rather than a "call center manager," a big distinction in her industry and one she worries has cost her jobs.
"To have a discrepancy, to make it seem like I inflated my title, is a kiss of death," she said.
Mike Smith, vice president for marketing at Talx, said that the company tries to facilitate communication between employees and employers but that it considers itself an agent for the employers and that any changes to records must be made through them.
Another company, DoctorsKnowUs.com, created a database of people who have filed malpractice claims as a resource for doctors. John S. Jones, a radiologist from Kaufman, Tex., who spent seven years compiling the information for the site, said he took it offline after some patients complained that it was impossible to differentiate between those with legitimate claims and those with frivolous ones, and that all could be denied care by those using the list. Since then, however, Jones has received hundreds of e-mails and phone calls from doctors who want the site back online, and he said in an interview that he is considering resurrecting it.
"It was public information. ... I was simply aggregating it," he said. "The site was mischaracterized as a blacklist."
A spokesman for Limited Brands Inc., which owns the Express stores, declined to answer questions about its computerized return authorization system. Mark R. Hilinski, a co-founder of the Return Exchange Inc., an Irvine, Calif.-based company that provides technology for the retail chain, said the computer denies returns to 1 to 2 percent of customers at most stores. He said even though the database is not subject to the requirements of the Fair Credit Act, his company provides consumers a free copy of their report when they ask and it gives them an opportunity to correct inaccurate data. He added that very few have disputed the information.
As the holiday shopping season gets into full swing, a number of major retailers — including KB Toys and Sports Authority, according to store personnel — are rolling out electronic systems that weigh the number of returns and exchanges a person has made, the dollar value of the items, and the dates of the transactions to decide whether a consumer should be granted another. The systems are designed to catch shoplifters and those who "wardrobe," wearing clothes and then returning them for a full refund........
As more personal information is collected into databases, computers have been handed increasing power to make decisions about our everyday lives. The technological systems aim to solve costly and important business problems, but the proliferation of these "electronic blacklists" has alarmed consumer and privacy advocacy groups who say many databases have incomplete, incorrect or misleading information.
"Technology has made it cheap to do all kinds of surveillance and watch over people and make sure they obey the rules. But when a system makes a mistake, what can you do?" said Richard Smith, an Internet security and privacy consultant.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970 gives consumers rights concerning information used to make decisions about credit, insurance, employment or other services. Other federal laws impose disclosure requirements on information collected by the medical establishment or the financial services industry. But increasingly, companies are creating databases not envisioned by such regulations, and there is debate about which laws, if any, apply.
Peggy Twohig, assistant director of the Division of Financial Practices of the Federal Trade Commission, which administers the Fair Credit Act, said whether a particular information system is covered by it "depends on the particular facts of each system, and can be a complex legal question."
Used more widely
Among the databases being created is one for landlords that purports to list renters who have been evicted. Others claim to identify "known" spammers. St. Louis-based Talx Corp., meanwhile, has compiled more than 100 million employee records that contain names of companies, dates of employment and job titles. More than 1,000 firms, including American Airlines, FedEx Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Kmart Corp., Marriott International Inc., Microsoft Corp. and PepsiCo Inc., make use of the service to speed along the screening process for potential new hires.
But workers worry that some companies, for instance, use the word "inactive" to refer to people who have left the company for any reason; other companies use "terminated," a word that some employees have argued has negative connotations. Perhaps the most common complaint is that job titles are incorrect. One woman, Shelli Isiminger of Dover, Del., said one of her former employers reported that she was a "supervisor" rather than a "call center manager," a big distinction in her industry and one she worries has cost her jobs.
"To have a discrepancy, to make it seem like I inflated my title, is a kiss of death," she said.
Mike Smith, vice president for marketing at Talx, said that the company tries to facilitate communication between employees and employers but that it considers itself an agent for the employers and that any changes to records must be made through them.
Another company, DoctorsKnowUs.com, created a database of people who have filed malpractice claims as a resource for doctors. John S. Jones, a radiologist from Kaufman, Tex., who spent seven years compiling the information for the site, said he took it offline after some patients complained that it was impossible to differentiate between those with legitimate claims and those with frivolous ones, and that all could be denied care by those using the list. Since then, however, Jones has received hundreds of e-mails and phone calls from doctors who want the site back online, and he said in an interview that he is considering resurrecting it.
"It was public information. ... I was simply aggregating it," he said. "The site was mischaracterized as a blacklist."
A spokesman for Limited Brands Inc., which owns the Express stores, declined to answer questions about its computerized return authorization system. Mark R. Hilinski, a co-founder of the Return Exchange Inc., an Irvine, Calif.-based company that provides technology for the retail chain, said the computer denies returns to 1 to 2 percent of customers at most stores. He said even though the database is not subject to the requirements of the Fair Credit Act, his company provides consumers a free copy of their report when they ask and it gives them an opportunity to correct inaccurate data. He added that very few have disputed the information.
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