Unfair Billing Practices by Public Utility

[Sum Ting Wong]

Hawaii

The Hawaii Board of Water Supply (BWS) is retroactively trying to bill their customers for their own billing mistakes. Per the BWS public relations officer, they have admitted publicly that the cause of their billing errors is due to their lack of manpower to process their meter readings in a timely manner and so they have been billing approximately 15% of their customers (roughly 26,000 households) off of estimated meter readings. After speaking with a number of BWS employees, last year they notified their management that they need additional employees to process their billing in a timely manner and management has ignored their employees and continued on business as usual. Due to the fact that management has been made aware of the billing issue beforehand, shouldn't they be held liable for any loss incurred from their decisions?

 

[justalayman]

what loss? You owe what is actually registered on the meter. If they estimated it, it does not mean you get anything actually used more than that for free. When there is an actual reading, you pay the balance or are credited with the over payment if they over estimated the amount used.

 

[ecmst12]

It's not an error, just a delay. As long as they are applying all meter readings across the board whether it's in their favor or the customer's, there isn't a problem. You don't get free water and they don't get to bill you for water you didn't actually use.

 

[swalsh411]

If they over-estimated and you paid for more water than they used would you be OK with them keeping the overpayment? Of course not. Why should it not be the same in reverse. A private business may, given the circumstances, not bill for an error in the name of customer service, but a public utility commissions likely legally cannot do so even if they wanted to

 

[Silverplum]

Your user name is not funny.

Your face probably is funny.