Saturday, April 29, 2006

Today's junk stat: Homeowners hire most illegal immigrants

From the AP via Yahoo comes another interesting survey result: "The No. 1 employers of day laborers, many of whom are illegal immigrants, are homeowners — not construction contractors, not professional landscapers." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060429/ap_on_bi_ge/hiring_day_laborers_3

"Forty-nine percent of day labor employers are homeowners, according to 2,660 laborers interviewed for the study. Contractors were second, at 43 percent. The study also found that three quarters of day laborers were illegal immigrants and most were from Latin America."

This occurs at a time when there is political discussion of the illegal immigrant question. There is particular discussion about the role employers should pay in enforcing the laws about illegal immigrant employment.  So, why not throw a few red herrings in there that suggest that ordinary American homeowners are the people really to blame?

Questioning this statistic is like shooting fish in a barrel. The paragraph cited just counts "employers". So, if Joe Blow hires one man for a day to clean up his leaves, he's an employer. A landscaping firm employing 20 people for 8 months a year is also an employer, and counts equally in the stats. But the landscaping firm accounts for over 4000 more employment days than Joe Blow.  This information may be in the full academic study by Dr. Valenzuela, but somehow doesn't make it into the AP article.

Today's junk stat: Realtors make you $31,000

Today's junk stat comes to you from the National Association of Realtors blog http://narblog1.realtors.org/mvtype/narinthenews/ , which reports that "the average seller who uses a real estate professional makes 16 percent more on the sale of their home than do sellers who go it alone. That's an average of $31,800 per home."

Of course, I don't usually hang out at the NAR site. The Freakonomics blog has a blurb about this http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2006/04/27/realtors-get-a-blog/ . The bloggers note that this figure is mysteriously high.

So where does it come from? "Leonard", A realtor who talked to the author of the study noted "I talked to the author of this study at the National Association of Realtors and it was based on a survey return from 155,000 mailings. The returns totalled 7400. The criteria was a sold, single famiy,detached home in the suburbs." 

So there's massive selection bias likely at work: the survey return is about 5%, people with very expensive homes might find it less than exciting to sell the home themselves and be more likely to hire a realtor, etc. But selection bias is expensive to eliminate, and almost certainly would lead to a less impressive headline than "The Cost of Selling without a REALTOR(trade mark registered): $31,800". So, if you are the NAR, why spend money on good statistics when there's better bang from cheaper bad statistics?

My own comment is that a good study would seem easy to do:

Wouldn’t a real study be stunningly easy to do? (1) there is usually an assessed value on the tax rolls, which are public information so people can compare assessments. Do this within an appropriate governmental unit so systematic variations in assessment don’t apply (2) house is sold either by a realto or not, which may be part of the publically available closing info (or may not, but would be easy to get by phone survey). One covariance analysis later and you’re done, and published!

Replicate this for 3115 US counties, publish each one, and sit back and enjoy that tenure—maybe even a chair endowed by a grateful real estate industry![*]

In fact, such a design is SO simple that one suspects that the results don’t provide much support to this.

[*]Some poetic license taken on this.

Friday, April 28, 2006

Chase itself send out suspicious e-mail

The latest Chase episode involves my attempt to provide helpful input. Really.

Part 1: Chase sent me an e-mail warning of certain pfishing attempts and providing guidance from William S. Shelby, Senior Vice-President.

Part 2: However, I thought some of their advice was flawed and told them so. Here's my e-mail:

I received the e-mail enclosed at the bottom from Mr. Shelby.

This contains the following statement: "Asks you to enter your User ID, password or account numbers into an e-mail or non-secure webpage."

I believe this statement is midleading and potentially dangerous. Even if the pfisher has a secure website, this doesn't mean that the pfisher is Chase. The secure website might be www.Bad_Scam.ca or some similar site.

Much better advice is to NEVER enter your ID, password, or any other personal information into any site that you got to by a link contained in an e-mail, or e-mail this information.

===========================
Dear Valued Customer,

We want you to be aware of e-mail scams that attempt to steal your personal and/or account information. Known as "Phishing," ... <snip> ....

you should never respond or reply to - e-mail that:
...Asks you to enter your User ID, password or account numbers into an e-mail or non-secure webpage. ....


William S. Sheley
Senior Vice President


Part 3: The Chase auto-responder (or perhaps a real person with too big a quota of responses to get out by the end of the day to actually READ the input) responded as if Chase's own message was pfishing spam. Maybe they are trying to tell themselves something.

Date:
 04-28-2006 15:24:44
From: Chase Online
Dear M. Kruger:

Thank you for submitting a suspicious e-mail message. We
receive a number of messages from customers and others who
have received suspicious e-mails that appear to have
originated from Chase. ...

[Now, of course, they even repeat the advice I was complaining about]

To help you safeguard your personal and financial
information, we recommend that you be suspicious of any
e-mail that:

...- Asks you to enter your User ID, password or account
numbers into an e-mail or non-secure webpage.
....

Thank you, Selina Hood
Internet Service Center
 

Monday, April 17, 2006

Does Chase want my opinion?

Lo and behold, shortly after I finished the previous blog entry critical of JP Morgan Chase's customer "service", I received an invitation  for a survey:

"Dear Chase Customer: Take a survey and receive a check for $10! ... We are interested in your opinions.... As a token of apreciation, if you qualify and complete this survey, you will receive a check for $10..."

At this point, still mad about the CD episode, I'm practically salivating to give Chase my opinion. I enter the URL for the survey. I answer questions about my age (which Chase already knows), occupation (which Chase already knows), and couple of questions about credit cards (which Chase partially knows, but I have several others). I'm then told I don't qualify and won't be getting paid, after answering several questions.  And, of course, there's no place to register my opinion.

It's as if Chase is taunting me.  And, maybe they are. They had just enough time to send out the survey invitation if it was automatically generated after the CD episode.

We are not amused.  Chase Logo

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Attention JP Morgan Chase: It's OUR money, not yours!

The bank I use has been swallowed up several times over the past few years, moving from

Glenview Gauranty to

First Federal of Wilmette to

First Chicago, which was then bought by

NBD (formerly National Bank of Detroit) to

Bank One, Bank1 or Banc One (they spelled it different ways; I was particularly confused by the "Banc" spelling used by their investment products) and finally

JP Morgan Chase

Some things get better (bill pay over the internet is the most notable one) but, in general, service has gotten worse. The most recent example occurred Saturday. My wife and I went in to redeem a certificate of deposit because another bank was offering a better rate. In other words, we had entrusted OUR money to Chase for a time, and now we wanted to get OUR money back, with interest.

There was no line to wait. It still took 45 minutes to get a check for OUR money. Chase employees engaged in an entire variety of delay tactics and misinformation. 

If we were renewed, we were initially promised a 4% rate. Then 4.75%. (still not as good as the bank down the road giving 5.23%).

We were told this would generate an unusual taxable event (it would not).

The banker needed to contact headquarters for instructions on how to handle the transaction. This sounds reasonable if the transaction was complicated, but for redeeming a CD at maturity?  He then spend several minutes on hold, occasionally seeming to look for the right form.

We were told we would lose free checking and be charged for our checking account. I responded "bullshit" to this, which is exactly what it was. We still have more in the bank than what's required to get free checking.

Two bank representatives then pretended to "fix our account links" so we would "still qualify for free checking". Eventually, 45 minutes after we first made contact with a Chase representative, we were given a check for OUR money.

In the olden days, this bank sent you a form. You could indicate any change in the renewal period, or request them to send YOUR money back when the CD expired. They even paid for the postage. This was evidently too easy and logical. Now, you need to redeem the CD in person (or so I was advised by the call center desk earlier that morning).

Needless to say, I'm shopping for a new bank.

Wednesday, April 5, 2006

123456

Today, at 1:23 a.m. (and again p.m.) on April 5, 2005 it was 1:23 4/5/06

The world did not end.  I don't expect it to this June, at 6:06 a.m. 6/6/06.

It may be a beastly morning, though.