Marin County Superior Court Engages in Fraud

I was travelling from my home in Nevada to Marin County, California in May, 2022. While in San Rafael I was the unfortunate recipient of a motor vehicle citation from a local police Officer, Sergeant Christopher Duncan, badge number 542, of the San Rafael Police Department. This is not the first time I have been the subject of a motor vehicle citation in California, but it was the first in San Rafael. It seems to be that police officers, in general, like to unreasonably cite drivers with out of state license plates, banking on the fact that the driver will not want to come back for a trial, even though the citation was issued on the flimsiest of circumstances. In this instance it was my opinion the alleged motor vehicle code infraction was a blatant overreach of the pertinent statute by the police officer who cited me. According to the instructions on the citation it stated, in part, in section 2: “If you contest the violation (select a. or b.) (Court Trial) Send a certified or registered letter postmarked no later than five days prior to the appearance date, or come into the court by the appearence date to request a court trial on a future date when an officer and any witnesses will be present. You will be required to submit the bail amount...” and, on the second page of the Courtesy Notice I received shortly after the incident in the mail it stated, in part: “PLEAD NOT GUILTY AND SCHEDULE A COURT DATE If you plan to plead not guilty, you may schedule a contested trial, where you and the police officer will present your evidence to the Court. You must schedule your court date by no later than the due date on this notice. Pursuant to VC §§ 40519(a) and (b), you must also pay your bail in full at the time you schedule your court date. If fount not guilty, or your case is dismissed at your court trial, your bail will be refunded to you.” I chose to contest the violation by pleading not guilty and selected a Court Trial and chose to appear at the counter at the Civic Center Traffic Division on June 21, 2022, where I paid the required bail amount of $237.00 in cash, in order to receive a ZOOM traffic court date of August 1, 2022. The bail payment was requred as noted in VC §§ 40519(a) and (b) as cited above. On August 1, 2022, I appeared via ZOOM for the trial and the case was dismissed by the magistrate. On August 2, 2022, I called the Traffic Division to ask when I was going to receive my $237.00 bail refund. They indicated that a check would be mailed to me by September 26, 2022. I called on or around September 28, 2022 and I was told that there was no record that I paid any bail amount and that, therefore, I would not receive a refund. It has now been about three and a half months that the Traffic Division of the Marin County Court has been holding my money. While the Traffic Division disavows having received the payment, and to make it perfectly clear, I am asserting that I tendered $237.00 in cash to the cashier at the Traffic Division Couner on June 21, 2022. I took the paperwork which was given to me that day which mentions the $237 bail amount as my receipt for the payment. I was offered no other paperwork and I assumed that this was the way it was done. I also relied on the fact that the instructions in section 2 a. of the Citation would have precluded me from having received a court date had I not tendered the bail amount in the first place. I also note that I relied on the assertion of VC §§ 40519 (a) and (b) in the Courtesy Notice, page 2, that I must “pay the bail at the time you schedule your court date” AND “If found not guilty, or your case is dismissed at your court trial, your bail will be refunded to you.” I have now sent a letter to the Supervisor of the Marin County Court, outlining the circumstances and formally asking for a refund. I have included the various tangible documents I received along the way during my process of dealing with their system. I have also included a ccpy of my bank statement which shows the withdrawal of the cash funds necessary to pay the bail on August 21, 2022. I am hopeful that when they complete their investigation, that they will conclude that what took place at the Traffic Division was an inadvertent error or oversight in the handling of my cash bail and lack of proper recording and receipt thereof by the clerk and not an overt act of material misrepresentation or fraud on the part of the Traffic Division or its employees. I have called both the San Rafael Police Department and the Marin County Sheriff's Department to report the fraud. Neither organization thinks that they have jursisiction over the matter and will not accept the reported fraud. I have spoken to the District Attorney and they also do not feel that they have jurisdiction over the matter. I am now going to report this matter to the Attorney General to see if they will investigate the fraud.

Shame on First Republic Bank

I bank at First Republic Bank. Today, my accountant called me about an item and I wanted to verify that the trasaction date and amount was right. I went online and attempted to look at a bank statement from a bit over a year ago. Try as I might I could not get to the statements as advertised on the website. Eventually I gave up and called the help desk. They told me what to do, but the funcitions that they mentioned didn't do what thay said they would do. Eventually they told me that they wanted to view my screen so that they could see what I was doing. After quite a delay in getting the computers to allow screen sharing with their application, they decided to investigate the proplem on their own. Don't worry, we will be back to you. In the meantime, the accountant is waiting for a simple lookup on my statement. After an hour they got back to me and suggested that I log into their revised verson of software to support online users. I did that and got the same results. No problem, the told me, we will get the statement you need and send it to you. I gave them the month and account number. After another hour or so, I got a message that there was a secure message available. I processed the necessary handshakes that took another 15 minutes. I looked at the statements and realized that they didn't send me what I had requested. They were off by a full year. I went back and looked at my email with the information that I needed, and I was very explicit with the date. They had misread what I wanted and sent me the wrong information. So, now, I cannot access my statements and they can't even send me the right ones that I need. Time to look for another bank. Anyone know a good bank?

ADT Incompetence Reigns Supreme, as Usual

Once again I had to interact with ADT about my security system. I had lost telephone service and their system here at my home calls their central site once a month. If it cannot get through it starts beeping about every 10 seconds at the control panel and lights up with CP Problem. This occurs in the middle of the night when everyone is normally sleeping. The reason they do it in the middle of the night is that the alarm systems hyjacks the land line telephone system that is shared. If it were during the day it might interrupt a legitimate telephone call. If the alarm system is unable to communicate with the central office it is programmed to attempt the same action the next night, and so forth for three days. At that point a person calls to let you know that there is a problem. Anyway, after the second night, I was surprised that the communication wasn't established with the central site, so I called the support line. There was a well spoken woman who fielded my call. I explained to her the situation and that there was a flashing warning on my panel that said "CP Problem Trouble". She asked me to push some buttons to get the message to disappear, but it would not. She then told me that she would have to send a technician to the site, charge me $100, and sign me up for the service to allow the technician to come at $7 a month. I told her that I did not want the service. This morning I decided to "fix" the problem myself. I went down to the control panel in the basement and dropped the power to the box. I had to also remove the wire to the battery backup, which powers the unit when the electricity is down. After about a minute I brought back the power and reconnected the battery. Lo and behold! No more CP Problem message on the panel. I called the support line and asked them to test the system communication capability. We ran a test and the communications is operating just fine. Well, I would go around turning off electricity to security systems all day for $100 a pop. What was done by ADT here was downright wrong. Any homeowner can easily drop the power to their security system if they really wanted to. Shame on you ADT for trying to scam your customers for more money.

Ticketmaster is Scalping Tickets Again

Ticketmaster wants $160 in "service fees" just to buy 2 Taylor Swift tickets that are already $380 each. That is insane. No thanks.

Zillow Zestimates Have Now Put Bumps on Their Bumps

We have reported here on numerous occasions the bizarre numbers used by Zillow for Zestimates, the Zillow estimate of a property's market value.  We have shown how inaccurate they are, but now we would like to describe a new problem that they have introduced.

First, on June 8, 2016, Zillow announced that they were changing the algorithm that they use for determining the Zestimate.  Not only did they change the current Zestimate value, but they were also changing them historically.  This was all done in the name of providing a more accurate Zestimate offering.

I have tracked the implications of this algorithmic change.  For many properties there were significant dislocations in the Zestimate as a result of the change to the algorithm, both current value and historical values.  Then, during the following month or so, the new Zestimate algorithm radically changed back to the original value or very close to it.  What conclusions can be drawn from such behavior of the Zestimate?  No rational basis can be discerned.

Now, on about October 24, 2016 the same phenomenon has occurred again.  However, this time there has been no press release or other comment by Zillow about the change.  Current Zestimate values have, in some instances changed dramatically, as well as the historical Zestimate information.

We have commented on the importance of this information for the financial "report card" of the property owner.  I personally applied for homeowner insurance on my home and was told by the agent that the replacement value used by them when they issue the policy is the Zestimate from Zillow.

This lunacy must stop!  A property owner opt out option must be implemented by Zillow.

Corporate Discrimination Against English Speaking Customers

I had occasion to call a large corporate customer service center. My call was answered by an automated system that indicated that a representative would be with me shortly.  At regular intervals I was reinformed that a representative would be with me in a moment. Automated apologies that they had not been able to answer the call, but that a representative would be with me shortly.
After about 30 minutes of this repeated message I was disconnected by them.

I decided to call back and chose the Spanish option.  After about one minute a person got on the line and started speaking with me in Spanish. I answered in English and the conversation proceeded in English and the representative dealt with the issue I had originally call the company about in a very efficient manner.

Now, I ask, "why was I able to accomplish this by choosing the Spanish option, but not the English option?"  This is not the first time I have done this. The results have been consistent.  I get better service by dialing the Spanish option than the English option.

Why would a company be biased to provide better service to Spanish speaking customers than English speaking customers? I cannot think of one reason for this bias.  Perhaps some readers could opine on this matter.

The Battle over the Purpose and Accuracy of Zillow

In a series of articles in the Washington Post in 2014, David Howell, CIO at McEnearney Associates, a Northern Virginia Realty firm, and Stan Humphries, Chief Economist at Zillow and architect of the Zestimate, slugged out their views on the accuracy and purpose of Zillow Zestimates.  To read their original articles just click on their respective names above.  I have not checked out the accuracy of Howell's claims about the accuracy, or, rather, inaccuracy of Zestimates for the northern Virginia market, but I would venture to say that his numbers are not inconsistent with the observations that I have seen elsewhere.  Humphries, on the other hand, while suggesting that the numbers put forward by Howell are slightly inaccurate because he has not performed the analysis on a large national basis, points out that the Zestimates over time are getting more accurate, which may, in fact, be true based upon the way that both he and Howell measure their results.  However, I believe that in the arguments put forward by Humphries there are some very troubling and subtle slights of hand being proffered:

First, all the studies of accuracy are based upon the Zestimate at the time of sale vs. actual sale price of a given home that has sold in the marketplace during the period being measured for accuracy.  This sounds like a simple enough measurement.  However,  I have shown in an earlier writing, a phenomena that I have called the Zillow Bump.  For those of you unfamiliar with this phenomena I suggest that you read the entry.  In that analysis I show a very curious change in Zestimates that occurs once a property gets listed.  Namely, if there is a significant difference between the Zestimate and the listing price, then the Zestimate will start on a very rapid journey to get much closer to the listing price. I have speculated as to the reason for this Zillow Bump and the reason why I feel this is a disingenuous attempt by Zillow to "improve" Zestimate results over time.  In essence, there is a small window of time for Zillow to more closely align the Zestimate to the sale price, so that at the time of sale (ie., when the data is collected) the Zestimate is within a closer range of the actual sale price.  That window is between the time that a home goes up for sale and the time it actually sells. 

Before I get into this point any deeper I want to cover another issue raised by Humphries -- that the original listing price vs. actual sale price is no more accurate than the Zestimate. The implication here is that the two numbers (ie., original listing price and Zestimate) are to be considered identical prognostications of the actual sale price. Nothing could be further from the truth.  A listing price by an owner in consultation with a broker is usually intended to be close to the intended actual sale price, but usually with a bias to the higher side of the actual sale price. This is not always the case, particularly in very hot markets where bidding wars are expected.  I do not have accurate statistics, but I would venture to say that in normal markets the actual sale price of a home is somewhere between 5% to 10% below the listing price (except, as I noted, in very hot markets).  The listing price is never intended to be the market value of a home.  It is intended to be approximately 5% to 10% above the actual sale price.  So, to do an apples to apples comparison between listing price and Zestimate the upside bias of the listing price should be removed.  Once this bias is incorporated into an analysis it will be evident that this "adjusted listing price" is a much better estimate of actual selling price than the Zestimate is.

Now, getting back to the first point, we can now more clearly see what the Zillow strategy is -- to "cook the books" on the analysis of Zestimate vs. actual sale price by altering the Zestimate and hopefully bring the Zestimate to about 8% below the listing price before the house sells and then claim that they are within a tight range.  This is a shell game.  It is an implicit acknowledgement by Zillow that the broker/owner listing price is a much better basis for actual sale price (adjusted to account for the broker bias) than the original Zestimate and that the original Zestimate before the house was listed is literally worthless.

The final point to be made would be that Zillow is talking out of both sides of their mouth when they claim, on the one hand, that the Zestimate is not an appraisal price, but, on the other hand, that because it is as accurate as the listing price, it can be used as a measure of value.  This is a very dangerous argument.  Howell has aptly pointed out that the homebuyer is greatly influenced by the internet and because of the blurring of what a Zestimate really is and how inaccurate it is, the prospective  buyer is unfairly influenced by it.  This means that the seller is unfairly influenced by it too.  
Clearly, Zillow is free to compute whatever it wants to, but at the same time, owners should be able to opt out of this charade of the Zestimate accuracy.  In my piece Zestimates from Zillow are Worthless I argue that the Zestimate is as important as a person's FICO score and that the abusive implementation of Zestimates by Zillow should be regulated with legislation similar to the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Bill Gasset, a ReMax realtor in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, wrote a very interesting piece shortly after the Washington Post articles appeared on the Zestimate inaccuracy issue.  In Bill's article he very aptly sums up many of the problems with the Zillow Zestimate, and actually had some positive things to say about the Zillow platform.
In 2015, The Los Angeles Times also ran an article on the inaccuracy of the Zillow Zestimates.  They reported on an interview on the TV show "CBS This Morning" where co-host Norah O'Donnell asked Zillow's Chief Executive, Spencer Rascoff, about the inaccuracy of their company's Zestimates. Rascoff's position is that the Zestimate is a "starting point" for determining the value of your home. In my humble opinion, it is a "starting point" as good as one you might hit when throwing a dart while blindfolded.  It is a marketing gimmick to attract attention to the Zillow website, no more, no less.

The proper numbers to measure are pre listing Zestimate vs. Actual Sales price.  You may want to factor in some sort of small deviation from this difference to take into account changes in the areas during the listing time.  For example, if immediately before the time that a home was listed it had a Zestimate of, let's Say X, and it took six months for the home to sell, then it would make sense to alter that number X by the amount that homes in the immediate area (say zip code, or something like this) have changed during that period.  For the case in point, let's say that it is six months and that the zip code has increased in value by 1.3%, then it would be fair to argue that the proper Zestimate value to use for comparison to the sale price is 1.013X, not X.