San Diego Water and Sewage Customers Affected by Glitches in the Billing System
KTC
COMM/215
November 1, 2011
Pamela J. McGlynn

San Diego Water and Sewage Customers
Affected by Glitches in the Billing System
The recent 24 million dollar upgrade to the San Diego water and sewage billing system is not performing as planned. The new billing system errors are occurring in customer billing rates, water and sewage service, and customer service response. In July 2011 the City of San Diego Public Utilities Department upgraded the water and sewage billing system at a cost of 24 million dollars. This billing system serves San Diego and the surrounding metropolitan areas, and has not performed satisfactorily,” in fact”, as of today; thousands of customers cannot log into the billing system whereas others are experiencing interruptions in their water service. It takes a few days up to two weeks to process mailed in payments. The system is back logged, and response times are very slow with customers waiting hours or days before receiving a response.
The water and sewage billing system, is overseen by the City of San Diego Utilities Department. The Utilities department has been deluged with both calls and e-mails complaining about the situation. This increase in customer service complaints is forcing the department to hire new employees and also to have current employees working nights and weekends to respond to the increased workload. These employees, both new and current can expect to work many hours of overtime, while tax payers will foot the bill for the extra hours and new hires. The San Diego Utilities department seems to have no idea when the billing service may be fully operational.
Some of the more frequently occurring issues are: the overcharging of customers, customers receiving no bills despite trying to contact their offices. Some complaints of