Birmingham Water Works GM says billing issues should be corrected by March 1

Since Birmingham Water Works implemented a new online billing system in November, thousands of customers have experienced billing issues. Birmingham Water Works General Manager Mac Underwood held a press conference at BWW’s administrative building on Tuesday, Feb. 7 to discuss the issues as well as steps they are taking to correct them.

Customers faced issues including higher than usual base charter, significantly higher bills, an inability to log into the new system and a lapse in billing. These customers then encountered obstacles when attempting to reach customer service representatives, as there were not enough of them to handle the high call volume.

“We probably could have done a few things a little bit better, a little bit different to roll this system out and make it a little more efficient on the roll out,” Underwood said.

Since the introduction of the new system, two new customer service representatives were added this week, and four were promoted to full time, Underwood said. BWW is also looking to see if their computer system could be used to manage automated issues.

When addressing the issues customers faced, Underwood said the difference in base charges came from a difference in billing period — if a billing period was longer than 37 days, the base charge would increase.

“We went in and adjusted the system to make sure the base charge is the base charge is the base charge going forward,” Underwood said. The issue affected about 20,000 customers. “We also credited those customers their overcharged amount.”

There were also 367 accounts with fire hydrants that did not receive bills for November, December or January. Underwood said those accounts would be billed for the three lapsed months and then have regular monthly bills going forward.

“We notified the municipalities that that was happening, we notified anybody with a private fire hydrant service and those customers are not being overcharged,” Underwood said. “Simply they did not get a bill for November, December and January.”

Underwood added that new systems typically have issues that need to be worked through. The $10 million system should be up and running properly now, he said. When asked why Birmingham Water Works chose to implement this new system, which Jefferson County has previously used and faced issues with, Underwood said there were also areas — including Huntsville and Alagasco — where the system was implemented and running smoothly.

In regard to high bills, with some residents reporting bills several times larger than their normal bills, Underwood said those were due to bill estimations. Because the system does not have automatic water meters — a project that would cost about $250 per meter or $50 million for the city — environmental factors can prevent a meter from being readable.

“That issue really has to do with estimation of customer accounts. On a day like today, if it rains like today, our meter readers simply can’t read some customer accounts,” Underwood said. “You open the meter lid, the meter box is full of water, they simply may not be able to see the account.”

BWW has identified around 5,000 customers on six routes that had issues with their bills in January, and Underwood said a customer service employee is “working through those billing problems and making those corrections.”

While the old billing system noted that some bills were estimated, the new system does not, Underwood said, and they are working to make sure customers are aware if their bill was estimated. When a water meter cannot be read, the bills are estimated based on the previous month’s bill. Things such as a leak or higher than average consumption in November or December, Underwood said, could lead to a high estimation for January consumption.

“If you had a high bill in November or December and we estimate your bill in January, then you’re going to have a high bill in January,” Underwood said.

Bills that are overcharged are corrected in the following month, Underwood said, if the meter reading is lower than the estimate. For example, if a meter could not be read in December and the estimated usage was high, but it could be read in January and the usage was lower than the estimate, the January bill would be lower to make up for the discrepancy.

“A number of customers who had a high bill one month would have a zero bill next month,” Underwood said. “It just meant we billed them earlier and corrected that bill in the next billing cycle.”

The new system also leads to less time to check bills, Underwood said. While the previous system had beginning and end read dates and a week’s gap before billing, Underwood said with the new system “we read today and bill tomorrow. So that’s a shorter time period to look at high bills and estimations and those kinds of issues.”

Some customers, however, reported higher bills starting in November. Those customers should have seen the bills already corrected, Underwood said.

“If they had a bad bill in November or December, those customer bills should be corrected at this time,” he said.

 The 5,000 customers BWW has identified should see their billing issues corrected by early March, Underwood said.

“By March 1, we will have reviewed the customer accounts and made appropriate adjustments so that their bills will be accurate going forward,” he said.