September 4, 2013

Dear City of Oakland... Seriously? WTF?

A couple of days ago, I received a notice from the city of Oakland claiming I had failed to respond to a parking ticket issued to my *grey* Honda (with my license plate number) that was issued to me at 4:55 PM on July 30, 2013 at 3300 Lakeshore Dr. 

My issues?

1.  I haven't been in Oakland for months, and I certainly wasn't there on July 30, 2013.
2.  I've never been to 3300 Lakeshore Dr.  Looks like a nice neighborhood, but I haven't had the pleasure just yet.
2.  My car is *bright* blue.  Not grey.
3.  Why is my license number and the make of my vehicle correct?  It couldn't be because I previously paid a ticket issued in Oakland without contest would it?

In short.  Oakland -- I am *not* impressed.  This looks like incompetence at best and blatant fraud at worst. 

Yes, I did file a detailed contest, including data from my garmin (showing me working out on the peninsula 10 minutes before the ticket), a photo of the blue (not grey) car, and an invitation that they subpoena IP addresses from Google re: emails I sent within 10 minutes of the supposed ticket that would put me in MV.

Of course, none of this is dispositive.  They could easily decide that someone else had my car despite my protestations that it wasn't possible.  It's essentially a case of he-said-she-said, where he is the city of Oakland parking.

Awesome. (Oh, and yes, I will spend the time and money to appeal this as far as I possibly can... I mean, WTF?)

4 comments:

Jen said...

Yikes... seriously? So embarrassing. Sorry on behalf of Oakland residents everywhere.

bt said...

@Jen -- I don't blame the residents!

Angela Knotts said...

DUDE. This happened to my boyfriend last year. We still haven't figured out how / why. He wrote them a letter saying he wasn't there & included some kind of circumstantial (don't remember what) evidence. They ended up being like, "Oh, sorry," & totally letting it go, so there is reason for optimism. But seriously--sooooo not impressed.

Biting Tongue said...

@Angela -- yeah, super shady and disappointing. I figured I was probably not the only one, hence the blog post.