Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District

Good Morning, In review of the customer's account and his latest meter read on 4/7/2016, we can confirm that the property appears to be vacant based on zero usage reported by his applicable water provider. There was an oversight in the amount of the adjustment given back on January 26, 2016 and...

he should have received an adjustment of 4 ccfs for his January, February, and March service periods. Instead, he was given one adjustment of 4 ccfs for his December service period only which was not the appropriate period and exclusive of the correct months.I have made the necessary corrections by applying a total of -12 ccfs (3 months - January through March @ 4 ccfs each) to the customer's account which has a monetary value of $35.52 (-12ccfs /Current Rate $3.21). The customer should expect to see this adjustment on his July bill statement. I also contacted the customer directly this morning and explained the aforementioned. He was then advised that he could pay the latest bill less the $ 38.52 and I agreed to hold collections and late charges until he received his new bill. I believe the matter to be resolved. Thank you.

To Whom It May Concern: The account referenced, [redacted], is being bill on a Residential Metered Rate. To clarify, any water meter reads done at the property by the customer's water provider between January 15 through April 30th is what MSD uses to calculate the customer's average consumption....

We call this time period, Winter Quarter. MSD will measure that value in CCFs. This particular customer moved in June 9, 2016. Since the usage is unknown for new waste water customers, MSD will bill a default of 7 ccfs for the remainder of our fiscal year until we receive another Winter Quarter read for 2017.The customer received their initial bill in July which was a back bill from June 9th. The next set of bills thereafter should have billed at 7 when in fact, they billed at 1. So in short, the customer was under billed. An adjustment occurred recently to correct the miscalculation resulting in the $86 adjustment the customer is referring to. The adjustment is accurate based on our standard billing practices. If there are any additional questions, the customer is more than welcome to contact me directly to discuss.  [redacted]MSD A/R Supervisor[redacted]

To Whom It May Concern: MSD does not get involved in civil matters. The tenant will have to address the issue with their landlord. MSD is billing the property owner and will continue to send a duplicate copy of the statement to the service address at the their request.

To Whom It May Concern: I have reviewed the active account for the property known as [redacted]. To provide some background, the property was not billed initially at the time that water services at that premise were turned on. MSD bills for waste water disposal service is based on...

information from the various water providers. If the water is on an active at the premise, MSD is then providing those aforementioned services. The water services were turned back on as of 3/07/2016. The property owner's account began to bill for services dating back to that date on 3/9/2017. That bill would have been larger than normal because it was a back bill for multiple service periods. Our ordinance #[redacted] allows the District to be able to back bill up to 18 months/545 Days for service once we have been made aware of water services.The District holds the property owner and/or users of service responsible for the bill. MSD will establish the accounts based on property ownership as verified through Assessor's Records. MSD does not get involved in civil matters between a landlord and their tenants, however, what we will do as a courtesy is to send a duplicate copy of the sewer bill to the tenant if that is what the owner request. The original copy is mailed to the property owner in an effort to meet our obligation in informing them of the accrued service charges. We will not remove a tenant but rather update the status if the tenant is no longer residing the property, again, at the request of the property owner. We have it noted as to when Ms. Nevels moved in and she received the duplicate copy because the property owner asked for a duplicate copy to be sent. Her responsibility to the charges is between her and Mr. Mike Gorka. If there are any other questions, please do not hesitate in contacting me directly. My contact information is listed below.  [redacted]Accounts Receivables Supervisor[redacted]

To Whom It May Concern: In review of the customer's accounts for [redacted]; [redacted]; and [redacted]., no further adjustments are warranted. It would appear that the issue is derived from the manner in which he makes his payments. When making a payment online, there are a few...

instances where the payment button is being clicked multiple time resulting in duplicate payments in the same month. I have attached Ledger History Reports for all 3 property accounts for your review. The customer had some overpayments on account # [redacted] ([redacted]) and those misapplied payments were transferred to account # [redacted] ([redacted].) on 2/1/2018 to resolve any outstanding balance due on that account. Additionally, the customer was contacted by a Call Center Lead Associate on 2/21/2018 and 2/22/2018 where clarification on how to make payments online was given. To avoid this in the future, the customer will need to make sure when making an online payment that he is only clicking the payment button once per account as to refrain from making duplicate payments on a single account. The issue has happened before, however, it appears that the payments were duplicated at that time as well. We consider the misapplied payment issue reconciled and resolved. Please see the attached Ledger Reports for reference. The customer may contact me directly if there are any additional questions.  [redacted]Accounts Receivables Supervisor[redacted]

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 10, 2015/10/26) */
Case [redacted]
Please accept my apology for the time it has taken to receive a response regarding this complaint. The requested refund will be processed and sent to the address as shown on Revdex.com Complaint#XXXXXXX, to the address...

indicated; [redacted] St. Louis, Mo. XXXXX.
[redacted] B. [redacted]
Accounts Receivable Supervisor
Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District
Initial Consumer Rebuttal /* (2000, 12, 2015/10/26) */
(The consumer indicated he/she ACCEPTED the response from the business.)
I have heard this 8 times before. Hopefully this time I will get my money. Cant believe how much time ive wasted trying to get my money back. Thanks.

Complaint: [redacted]
I am rejecting this response because: She did call and left a message. I have tried calling her back with no response. I have called the day she called, I called her Friday 7/1 and this morning 7/5. “When we receive a title quote request, if the sale does not go through, the Title is supposed to go out to our system and cancel the quote request” This never happened, they never closed that request until January when I called about it. We had no idea about the creation of another account, for the woman who was trying to buy my home. “If this is not done and we do not catch that on this end, our billing system will automatically close the existing account and begin billing a new account for the intended buyer.” I understand this as they should’ve closed our account and put the billing on to the other woman’s account. “If we are made aware that the sale did not go through and we have already begun to bill someone in error, to correct this we would simply reverse the creation of that new erroneous account, re-open the true existing customer's account, and transfer any charges back to the original account.” When she opened this account, they charged her $157.77, because she had a higher rate; our rate was lower because we had the house for 10 years. The only problem is we continued to pay on that account. Each month we had paid $24 by automatic payment. They raised the rate to $37, and I never got notification, possibly because they didn’t have my new address, so the only discrepancy should be the difference in the new rate because we didn’t know it had been raised. Therefore, our account balance should only show the difference from the rate raise. As far as we knew, the account never changed, so we continued to pay. This is why I am asking them to take the charges from her off our account. We never even knew she had an account, which is why we kept paying. We want to know what happened to our payments for those three months. On our end they are trying to double charge us for the three months. I called and asked what the $160 was for, and they cannot answer what it is.
Sincerely,
[redacted]

To Whom It May Concern:  I have read the customer's concerns and certainly do understand the frustration. It would appear that her number was updated to another unrelated account in error (off by 1 digit) and thus when that account became delinquent, our Pre-collection dialer picks up the...

number in an attempt to reach the property owner to warn them about any potential collection activity. Since her number was tied to the account erroneously, it will continue to dial that number 3 times a day until the account delinquent balance is resolved and/or the account is moved to the next phase of our collections processes. Understandably, this can be rather annoying especially if the person being contacted is not the intended party we are trying to reach. I have removed the number from the other customer's account, made the necessary changes. She will no longer receive any other calls related to any other accounts outside of her own. The customer is more than welcome to contact me directly if there are any other issues. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.  [redacted]MSD A/R Supervisor[redacted]

Good Morning, We have reviewed the customer's account and have arrived at the following to explain her concerns: Our office received a title quote from a Title Company on 5/23/2015. The requester, [redacted] advised the intended closing date to be 6/9/2015. When we receive a title quote...

request, if the sale does not go through, the Title is supposed to go out to our system and cancel the quote request. If this is not done and we do not catch that on this end, our billing system will automatically close the existing account and begin billing a new account for the intended buyer. If we are made aware that the sale did not go through and we have already begun to bill someone in error, to correct this we would simply reverse the creation of that new erroneous account, re-open the true existing customer's account, and transfer any charges back to the original account.  Our sewer service charges stay with the property and through the title process we are able to collect any outstanding amounts due as well as accrued service charges due through an intended closing date, however, if there is no such exchange, we simply transfer any outstanding balances to a new owner's account and/or if there are any scenarios such as the one described above we would do the same to make sure that the proper owner is aware of all charges due. Since Mr. & Mrs. [redacted]'s ownership of the property known as 8101 Normal Dr. has remained unchanged and services for water were not terminated, the bill charges for sewer would continue for them. We simply made the appropriate adjustments to ensure that all charges are on the proper account. Additionally, when there is a new owner account created the volume of average ccfs is set at a default of 7 ccfs (it was 8 in our prior fiscal year). We identified that volume was not applicable to Mr. & Mrs. [redacted]'s usage and made the appropriate adjustments on any months where volume was overcharged. This change was made on 5/27/2016 and would ahve been visible on their June bill.I attempted to contact the customer directly to explain in detail, however, I was only able to leave a voice mail message. Please let me know if there are any other questions.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 10, 2015/05/27) */
Revdex.com Case #XXXXXXX D. [redacted]
Please accept my apology for the incorrect billing of the property located at [redacted] We have since corrected the error and eliminated the account so it does not produce an MSD bill.
Sincerely,
[redacted]...

B. [redacted]
A/R Supervisor

Good Morning,The customer spoke with our Call Operations Manager and myself, the Accounts Receivables Supervisor, on August 4, 2016 at which point the following transpired: I returned a call to Mr. [redacted], who advised that he would like his payments refunded and his bank fees refunded on three MSD...

accounts ([redacted]) because he had deactivated the Recurring Payment feature online. Per Call Center Manager, the customer is confirmed to still be on recurring payment until today, August 4, 2016, where it was cancelled by MSD due to his concerns. Per the Call Center Manager., the Recurring Payment feature within our online system was initiated by the customer and records indicated that he had not physically accessed the system since 5/31/2016. I respectfully declined his request as we are not responsible for the user's failure to cancel recurring payments or failure to notify MSD of his wishes. The customer demanded all of his payments back while informing me that the bank account is closed and he cancelled recurring payment as of Friday, July 29, 2016. I explained if MSD is notified of a rejection from his banking institution (i.e. account closed, insufficient funds, etc.) we will reverse the payments but rejection fees would apply and post to his MSD account. Customer was not happy with my response and demanded further escalation. His concerns were escalated to our Accounts Receivables Manager. My Manager made several attempts to reach the customer on August 9, 2016. That was my last update.   [redacted]A/R Supervisor[redacted]

Good Morning, The customer's issue was resolved on 5/24/2017 after a thorough review of the bankrupt account # [redacted]. That account received a credit adjustment of -$274.39 that posted on 5/24/2017 bringing the account balance to a zero value. The customer does not owe anything further on...

this account. If there are any additional questions or requests, the customer may contact [redacted], Accounts Receivables Supervisor-[redacted]@stlmsd.com, [redacted], who oversees our Bankruptcy processes.   [redacted]Accounts Receivables Supervisor[redacted]

To Whom It May Concern: Mr. [redacted]'s account # [redacted] has been adjusted and the current balance is zero. The erroneous charges were adjusted on 7/14/2017, the account is now inactive, and there have not been any collections activity initiated. The District nor it's vendor do any...

reporting to the major credit bureaus. A new account has been established for the new owner. No further action is required. If the customer wishes to discuss further, he may contact me directly at the contact information listed below. [redacted]MSD Accounts Receivables Supervisor[redacted]