Received an insane water bill from the city, recourse?

[PandaBear]

Water main rupture. What they will do for you depends on your local laws and codes. Some will waive the extra if you prove you fix your problem while others, like in California with laws to mandate charging "cost" to customers only, they cannot do anything for you because then they will charge others instead to compensate, and make them charge more than 'cost'.

First, find the leak. Mine burst for 3 feet and had 270 CCF in that morning gone, end up with a $1200 bill.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Water main rupture.

Rupture that only existed that one month and miraculously fixed itself in subsequent months?

 

[Justus1]

I've live in this house for over 5 years, and my water usage has ALWAYS been between 2 CCF (living alone) and 10 CCF per month (3 room mates, 4 people total). My billing cycle is from the 4th to the 4th of every month. I just received my March statement, which would have run from Feb. 4th to Mar. 4th, and much to my surprise it was over $800!

Immediately thinking I screwed up a payment or something, I logged in to my online account only to find the issue: the claim my Jan. 4th to Feb. 4th water usage was 73 CCF!! That's over 55 THOUSAND gallons of water! This is an "actual" reading. The guy drives around pinging the meter and it just compares the previous reading to the current reading and bills accordingly. Thing is, my usage the previous period looked normal, 11 CCF, and my current usage from Feb. 4th to Mar. 4th was 7 CCF.

I called, and talked to 3 different people who said "must have left something on" and that the reading is the reading. I know for a fact that nothing was leaking or left on. The outside water is off, the downstairs toilet that's never used is off, and I have people in the house almost 24/7 to alert me to an issue. I know my home, unless there's a new swimming pool somewhere that I don't know about, this is insanity.

The only thing they said they could do is remove the meter, at MY expense, test it with their "calibration equipment" to verify it's readings, and install a new meter. Again, at MY expense. This is the craziest thing I've ever heard.

I have a sneaking suspicion that there's no way out of this, you know what they say: you can't fight city hall. I'm just wondering if anyone else has been through this, and what the outcome was.

To be clear, this is what the usage shows:

12/4 - Actual reading 806
1/4 - 817
2/4 - 890
3/4 - 897

I'm so glad I'm dumping this place, home ownership is a pain in the rear. Not that this couldn't happen anywhere, but still. It's starting to nickel and dime me and I'm sitting on 100k in equity in 6 short years. I'm out.

Two things come to mind: 1) leak, either under ground or toilet. If you have an outside, frost free spigot, they can leak out the bottom. Put food coloring in the toilet tank then, without flushing, see if it shows up in the toilet bowl.
2) all water meters have a pyramid shaped leak detector somewhere on the dial. If that is moving, when all the faucets
Are off, you have a leak.

 

[PandaBear]

Rupture that only existed that one month and miraculously fixed itself in subsequent months?

It happened to me once, it was a rubber joint for 2 sections of PVC together that leaked, when you step on it at the right angle it stopped but the wrong angle it start leaking again.

 

[Aredeeem]

Have you had a meter replacement in the last year or so? Water companies are famous for screwing up the billing after that. Happened to me. Said I owed $800. Fought for months to get that straightened out.

 

[R1jake]

You can have the city check the meter again, but odds are you have a cracked line somewhere.

Did you not read the part where he has had another month since with normal use?? The cracked line can’t heal itself.

 

[R1jake]

Ok here is my theory after reading the thread. Was this bad bill from the coldest month??? Perhaps it got cold enough that month to somehow cause a leak under ground somewhere but then stopped leaking once the temps rose?? I seriously doubt this big of a leak could fix itself but just a thought. Being that you have had a normal bill after the large bill I’m just trying to think outside the box.

 

[Hall]

Let's say they test the meter and find it faulty, do you STILL have to pay for it?

Different meter (gas) but at work, we don't use/need natural gas except for the furnace. The local utility charges $120/month "delivery fee" whether you have usage or not so what we and most other tenants do is a seasonal shut-off. We did this last spring and even shut off the valves to the furnaces (tech advised we do this to keep air from building up in the line making it harder to re-light in the fall) but got a gas bill, showing usage, for a couple months. Let it go thinking we turned it off mid-cycle or something... After the next bill, we called, they sent a tech out, and he confirmed the valves were shut off. While he was watching the meter dial, it moved. Not a lot, but that's all it took. He replaced the meter and we're going on 4-5 months with no gas bill. This is Ohio with cold winters and two furnaces running too ! We presume they credited us a substantial amount though the bill says nothing other than "Amount due: $0.00". We're going to call next week at this point.

 

[DuckRyder]

Yes, I can. And yes, with all water off in the house the meter is at full stop. No, the meter is from 1993 according to the city.

Does your bill not show previous and present readings to arrive at usage?

What i was getting at is that our meter showed less than what they had said, in looking it was pretty clear that they had been fudging the numbers after the bad one... (because the "previous reading" was more than was presently on the meter.

For a long time i took pictures of it the few days around which they typically read it, i had even been known to make sure meter reader truck guy/gal saw me do it...

 

[Jarlaxle]

Time to call the state PUC.

 

[spasm3]

You don't by chance, have any close neighbors that own a pool do you? LOL

 

[vwmaniaman]

Replace the meter. If you look at the numbers it was counting Ones position as Tens position. Scale may have stuck together. My money would be on the meter being bad. If it did it once it will happen again.

 

[meloon]

Do you have any Reverse Osmosis devices in your house (like RO water filter)? If you do and the pressure in the expansion tank gets low, or the auto-off valve on the RO system fails, then water will keep flowing through the system even with the faucet shut. Do not ask how do I know - my bill doubled.

 

[mark pruett]

Did the utility recently install a new meter. Sometimes they do that if the meter is too old or they upgrade. And if a new meter was installed there may have been an error in the change from old to new.

Actually... there was a great hue and cry around here when the local electric delivery provider swapped out the meters on a bunch of older houses in one part of town; apparently they weren't accurate, were hard to read, etc... so they'd been letting them slide for years. But the new ones were spot on, and people's bills went up as a result.

Anyway, to the OP's question... I actually work in IT for a city government, and I work with the water department pretty closely. Around here, there are several things you can do. First, you can get a one-time bill adjustment if you have a month that's just insane- they'll basically forgive you a f**kup like leaving the sprinkler on all night, or something like that. Second, you can get them to come out and do a sort of water audit- they'll check the toilets, sinks, etc... and see if any of them are leaking water that you're not aware of. Third, if they have the AMI/AMR meters (networked or truck-radio) they can often get more granular data as to when exactly that consumption happened- in the case of AMI, it can be down to some sub-hourly interval IIRC- like every 15 minutes or something. Ask for it. Even if they have guys walking around reading meters, you can ask them why your bill is so high- they'll review the data, and can tell if the guy transposed the numbers or something like that. They may even come re-read the meter just to make sure.

You may be able to identify a transposition just by looking at your bill and the meter; some utilities put the actual reading on the statement. (they subtract the current from the previous one to get your consumption over the period) So if your current bill says the reading was 0143321 and your meter currently reads more like 0134321, then you know someone transposed the reading. If it's an AMI/AMR meter, there's no misreading involved; the question is more whether you accidentally used that water, or whether the meter is mechanically malfunctioning.

 

[tshephard]

On a similar note...
My dad was in vending, so family had microwave early.
When I moved out on my (and new wife's ) own, first appliance was a microwave.
So 99% of 'cooking' was now MW.
Came home one day, 2 city guys changing the meter for not recording flow.

 

[Brons2]

This happened to me 4 years ago. I had a $2000 water bill from the City of Austin. They refused to budge. I literally sold my house and moved to the suburbs in the end.

I started paying them $200 a month, every month as soon as I got paid. After 4 months they sent me to collections despite me dutifully sending $200 towards the balance every month. I called dozens of times to complain and I spammed City Council members from every email address that I had.

Thanks for working with people in good faith, you jerks. I'm never coming back to the once fine city that you have ruined. There was a lot of water under the bridge besides the water bill as well, but anyway.

P.S.:

WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T MOVE HERE. WHATEVER YOU HAVE HEARD, IS FALSE, OR WAS TRUE ONLY A LONG TIME AGO.

Hope this rant helps somebody.

 

[alarmguy]

Call your water company, they will send someone to your house to investigate. (just realized this is an OLD thread)

 

[Silver]

I racked up a few hundred extra when my hot water heater expansion valve stuck open once. My wife noticed a pool of water between the porch and house, a hidden place, where it drains. Otherwise I may not have found it on my own.

 

[PandaBear]

This happened to me 4 years ago. I had a $2000 water bill from the City of Austin. They refused to budge. I literally sold my house and moved to the suburbs in the end.

I started paying them $200 a month, every month as soon as I got paid. After 4 months they sent me to collections despite me dutifully sending $200 towards the balance every month. I called dozens of times to complain and I spammed City Council members from every email address that I had.

Thanks for working with people in good faith, you jerks. I'm never coming back to the once fine city that you have ruined. There was a lot of water under the bridge besides the water bill as well, but anyway.

P.S.:

WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T MOVE HERE. WHATEVER YOU HAVE HEARD, IS FALSE, OR WAS TRUE ONLY A LONG TIME AGO.

Hope this rant helps somebody.

Dude you are really mixing things. I too had a $1200 water bill but instead of just ignoring it and let it go to collection then say the city is bad, I actually appeal and have them send out people to check what is going on, and eventually ended up paying that bill. That's the right thing to do you work with them instead of just ignoring it and let it go to collection.