and if it's easy you should do it yourself to save yourself of their fee.

These firms only get paid as a percentage of what they save their customers. They take on as many cases as possible and select the easy ones as that's their easy pay day. If your case has any nuance or complication they will pass right over it for someone who's obviously over assessed. Why work hard for a thousand dollars when you could do no work for more money?

Even if you don't lower your tax bill, even if you don't 'win', you can still reduce your market value and limit how much your taxes can rise in the future. Even in hot years (like the last fucking 10) I can save $10K on my assessment, which is then reduces next years 10% increase by $1K. Compound this over time and it's well worth the hour of work it'll take you.

How did voting go for you today?

They had a hiccup logging me in and it took some time to get started because of it, but voting was easy once everything was set. Someone else at the same polling place had their paper jam, but it too was resolved.

I'm glad they're working out the kinks in a low turnout election.