The City of Chicago does not like Tom Feddor’s license plate number.
That’s because it’s simply the number ‘0′.
That’s it!
Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. 0.
According to a nice piece by the Tribune’s Transportation writer, Jon Hilkevitch, Feddor license plate has received 170 tickets since 2007.
In fact, you can look it up yourself. Just go to the city’s parking ticket search website. Plug in the number ‘0′ in the Plate Number field and the last name “Feddor” into the Last Name of Owner field and presto, you can see for yourself.
It turns out the ‘0′ license plate number, coincidentally is also the test number that Parking Enforcement Aides (PEA) use to test their AutoCITE handheld ticketing computers.
DOH!
I guess that explains it.
The majority of these tickets have been dismissed and it seems that the Dept. of Revenue, AFTER the Tribune’s Hilkevitch started sniffing around, got the message and has made some changes to their testing policies.
“None of us knew why, but Revenue Management issued a new memo on how to do our tester tickets. In years past we always used 0 or 0000 for the plate number,” says PEA Ticketmaster. “Guess some supervisor forgot to check and make sure the testers were voided. With the new policy in place, hopefully no one else will get a ticket.”
Read all the tawdry details in today’s Chicago Tribune.
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a friend in Ohio has “NOTHING”. he’s had his share of fun with it, but more of the “who’s on first” variety than ticket trouble.
Being a total nerd, I think I would enjoy that Abbott & Costello variety of humor over 170 wrongly issued parking tickets any day.
What stuns me is that the PEA’s that were using the Zero for a plate number were not voiding out their testers as Required per policy.
Thats why I always wrote one like this
Plate: 0
State: varied
Plate Type: Pas
Expire Date: 8/22
Make: Freightliner
No way it gets past Sec. State due to a Truck type with a Passenger plate.
We are now being instructed to Issue:
Plate #: REVENUE
Plate Type: PAS
Expire Year: Any
Model: Any
hold the phone here DoR…….dont just put the blame on us….sure some of us forgot to void the testers…..admittedly no xcuse….but when the supervisors are pushing you out the door as fast they can….things can slip through,,,,,,sure the peas failed,….so did the supervisors…..so did the little old pea lady, hasnt walked a beat in years and the only thing she has to do is make sure there are no problems with the autocites and the tickets they produce…..and then you have the ibm people entering the database….someone needs to invesitgate how a 4 layers of security failed from having this poor soul ticketed improperly…
Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail! Dept. Of Revenue = Fail!
In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think this is that huge of a deal.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a big goof, that’s for sure.
But it’s a bunch of little mistakes at multiple levels that added up into an embarrassing story in the Trib.
To me, the thing that makes me a bit testy is that, at least by the Trib story, the DOR, when made aware of it by the driver and the Admin. Hearing officer, basically blew it off and allowed it continue.
I think if the driver had contacted a manager directly (Ed Walsh, one of the Street Ops Supervisors, etc.) it would have been handled and nipped in the bud. In general, I believe DOR management aims to do the right thing.
My guess, they were talking to some cashier or telephone operator who did not have the where with all to move the issue up the food chain correctly.
The sad thing, it takes someone in the media to focus attention on something like this before it gets taken care of.
I wonder how many problems like this do get taken care of and you never hear about it in the media because there’s no controversy?
I don’t believe that there are no positive stories coming out of Revenue.
Perhaps someone over at DOR wants to share these type of success stories with us. Send us the story and we’ll publish it guys.
Just found out a nice little tidbit about this.
It seems that even if the PEA forgets to void the tester; and the supervisor catches it (accidents do happen after all); the software was still acting if it was “Live” when the Autocite was plugged in to download.
SO regardless of PEA error Or Supervisor Error or a stupid clerk……..there is a glaring issue with the Duncan Software and IBM processing system.
And ladypea…..I know errors occur and people forget things at times.
But the 1 Major Job we have (besides listening to power tripping supervisors and grabbing enough supplies for the shift) in Roll Call is to Issue a Test Violation and Void it out before we meander out to our Beats.
Wanna see something funny, go to the parking ticket search site and type in “fox2″ for the plate number and “Fox” for the last name. No this is not a channel 32 news van, it is a regular old passenger car, a black mercedes benz to be exact. And all of those citations and payments are for real and not test tickets. How crazy is that?? Some people have way way way too much money!!
HJ…
Some people park in a garage at night and never manage to get towed…..