Austin Customers Demand Refunds After Meter Dysfunction

Amid complaints from customers over unusually high bills, Austin Water has issued at least one refund to a customer with a damaged water meter.

“For the past few weeks, Austin Water and Austin Energy have been busy fielding calls from customers regarding high water bills and how they believe the bills and water usage are incorrect. Austin Water says they are checking accounts and have issued at least one credit to a customer,” KXAN reported.

Ratepayer Jason Jepson received a credit for nearly $1000. The utility also replaced his water meter, saying it was damaged and hard to read, according to the report.

“They were billing us for 1,000 gallons of water a day almost. It went down to less than 100 gallons,” Jepson said, per the report. “We’ll get three separate credits that will continually bring down our bill to average what we were paying prior to the recent spike in usage.”

About a thousand customers have complained about high bills, Greg Meszaros of Austin Water told TWC News. He said the problem is usually on the ratepayer’s side.

"They will run their lawnmower and inadvertently hack off the top of a sprinkler head, and they don't know that their sprinkler head is cut off. When the irrigation system runs at three in the morning and that irrigation head turns on, it will be a geyser," Meszaros said, per the report.

Austin Water addressed the concerns at a recent public meeting, where nearly two dozen ratepayers came to discuss the problem. Utility officials said it does not believe the problem is widespread, but it is still investigating and will resolve any issues where needed.

The report described previous billing errors by this utility: “Last year, a KXAN investigation revealed customers were overbilled at least 550 times in 2012.The majority of those cases were because workers were reading the meters wrong.”

More stories on how ratepayers interact with utilities can be found at Water Online’s Consumer Outreach Solutions Center.