The duplicity of IKEA

On Wednesday, I decided to order a desk and some bookcases from IKEA.

Finding the items I liked, I went through the checkout process uneventfully.



I expected that the word "shortly" meant that a confirmation email would arrive faster than I could check my inbox. Given my experience with dozens of other online stores, my expectation was not out of line. However, nothing showed up even an hour later.

I looked at IKEA's How To E-Shop page. (Side note: I anxiously await the day when we all start referring to buying from a web site as just "shopping".) In reference to the confirmation email, the last step on the page says not "shortly", but "within 12 hours".



Twelve hours passed without word. At 19 hours, I phoned IKEA's customer service line and was told that orders don't even show up in their system for 24 hours.

It has now been 39.5 hours. No one from IKEA has phoned or emailed about my order.

IKEA may be competent in other areas, but their online ordering system needs a lot of work. If you have to buy from them, consider visiting one of their physical stores instead.

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Bad luck, scumbag - you've just been BaitCar'd!

BaitCar.com is an exciting prospect for law enforcement. It's also exciting for the general public as a sort of pornographic justice.



Specially-equipped cars (wired for audio and video) are left sitting around BC by police officers who wait for someone to steal them. When a theft takes place, the car's engine is stopped remotely and the police swarm in to make the arrest.

How bad does a car theft problem have to be before a creative solution like this is employed? According to officials, very bad:

Auto theft in the Greater Vancouver area is nothing short of an epidemic. In 2003 there were approximately 30,000 cars and trucks stolen from an area with a population of just over 2 million people. In the city of Surrey alone 8,000 vehicles were stolen from this city of 390,000 people. This was the highest auto theft year in the region's history after a steady increase for the previous decade. The next year, 2004, brought with it the introduction of the bait car program which is partly responsible for a 10% reduction in auto theft in Greater Vancouver - the first decline in ten years.

So now the BaitCar.com has launched with videos of the offenders. Where could this lead? Read on...

As BaitCar.com points out, the site has become very popular. It's getting linked to from a lot of blogs and news sites, so there's bound to be an oversized amount of traffic for a while. But even when the initial shock interest peters out, a large following could be maintained with the right marketing efforts.

Given a wide enough coverage area, the whole program could be spun into a reality TV show with live thefts and arrests. The proceeds from advertising could pay for social programs that address the root causes of car thievery (be it education, poverty, boredom, etc) and also pay for expansion of the bait car fleet.

Auto insurance companies could sponsor the program by buying advertising during the program, or by kicking over $X dollars every time a thief is convicted.

Income could also be supplemented by selling web access to uncensored versions of the TV show or "extreme" DVDs, etc.

As for privacy and entrapment implications... Well, we're headed towards always-on-camera society anyway. Why not embrace it? How about a team of amateur shoplifter-spotters with hidden wireless video hookups? Every citizen could become a law enforcement officer, or at least an evidence gatherer. I think that we'd probably end up re-examining the validity of many laws (ie jaywalking), but could there be an elimination of non-passion crimes?

These are some more of the charming pictures from the BaitCar.com image gallery:

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