an entertaining victory over the SF DPT

Well it was a long battle but when I finally received the final letter of judgement the other day I had to laugh out loud at how ridiculous it was.

Last spring I had a parking ticket I needed to pay so I called to check on it and discovered I had another one that I did not know about. It was for not curbing my wheels in a neighborhood in South San Francisco on a week day morning at around 8 AM. Now I had never been to that part of town and certainly was not on that day. My first class begins at 8:15 AM and I was at work that day. (I did actually go to work late that day because I was in Marin helping Anke get off on her trip to Germany but I left that detail out of the official story)

So I wrote a letter to contest my ticket. I explained I had never been there and that I was at work and that there must have been some kind of mistake and that I was thankful for their understanding and their action to fix the mistake.

I eventually got a letter saying I had not payed my fine and it was now doubled. I called to tell them about my original letter and the lady on the phone actually had a copy of the letter on file. She read the whole thing and said "Well this is not a letter of contest: you never say in the letter that you are 'contesting the ticket'".

I could not believe it! Because I had not written the words "I am contesting this ticket" they did not consider my letter. I guess they thought I was writing to tell them that I could not have gotten the ticket and I wanted them to fix the mistake but that I also wanted to pay the fine?

So I asked her if I could write a letter explaining that my original letter was in fact a letter to contest my ticket. She said I could try. So try I did.

Months later another notice said my fine was increased yet again. I called and the lady said that my second letter was not considered because it did not come within the 21 days that I have after getting a ticket to write such a letter. The fact that my original letter came within that 21 days did not matter. The second letter was late so it did not count.

I was furious (but polite) and talked with the lady about my options. She said she could reduce my fine to the original amount if I wanted to pay it or I could talk to the manager. I liked the idea of just paying the original amount ( a fraction of the new fine) but figured I would talk to the manager, who at the least, would give me the same deal. She took my name and said she would get back to me.

A week later she had not gotten back so I called, the manager was not in but I left a message on her voice mail. Never heard back. After a couple months or so of leaving messages with this "manager" I finally explained to another lady that I was getting upset about this whole thing.

This lady opened my file, read the letters and gave me more options. She said I should come in and talk to a judge but this would mean taking a day off school which is a bad option. She said I could write and request a hearing by telephone and that someone would call to schedule a time. This sounded like my best option.

But then the lady went on to say she thought I was obviously guilty and that I had little chance of winning a hearing. Her main reasoning for this was the fact that my car's VIN number was written on the ticket, which guarantees (she said) that the officer walked around and took the time to make sure it was the right car and everything. I told her that meant nothing to me, that there must have been some sort of computer error that put my info on this ticket. She did not believe me but told me to write for a hearing if I want.

So I did (plus you must pay the fine which they will give back to you if you are found innocent) and I never got a call.

BUT I did just get a letter that said after reviewing the case it was decided that they would refund my money and dismiss the the case because "the citation was determined to contain incorrect information". It went on to clarify:

"The citation location documented in the citation does not exist!!!!"

Those @#*#@ers