San Diego couple receives whopping $16K water bill

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SAN DIEGO — CBS 8 is Working for You to investigate high water bills in the City of San Diego. But this one takes the cake. A couple living in the Santaluz community recently received a $16,000 water bill.

To make matters worse, the San Diego Public Utilities Department only gave the couple two weeks to pay the bill.

“It’s a large bill, $16,000. So, it was a pretty big shock to us to have a bill for that amount of money,” said the homeowner, Rick Graham.

A few months ago, Rick and his wife Hiba Graham realized they had not received any water bill for the past 16 months.

“I thought Hiba was taking care of the bill. She thought I was taking care of the bill. And then it clicked for us that we haven't gotten a bill from the city for many months,” Rick said.

After spending 50 minutes on hold, Hiba finally got through by telephone to the Public Utilities Department.

“The way it was explained to me was that when there is a change, either excessive or under usage, their system stops a billing as a way to have somebody check to ensure that there wasn't an error,” said Hiba.

The couple lives in Santaluz off Carmel Valley Road. They believe the bill is correct because their typical water bill is about $1,000 per month.

They reached out to CBS 8, wanting to know why the city never notified them that their account had been flagged and their billing was suspended.

“They seem to have an automated system that stops the billing from going out, requiring manual review, which could take up to a year. Well, there should be some other technological advance that could allow them to communicate with the customers. I'm on the board of directors of a software company. I know that these things can be solved with software. And this manual approach is just unacceptable,” said Rick.

The city of San Diego emailed CBS 8 the following statement:

Currently, more than 90% of Public Utilities customers receive timely bills. Over the past few years, this number has fluctuated between 90 – 98%. It is a goal of the Public Utilities Department to continue improving operations and increase billing timeliness.

The City is working on an IT system enhancement that would timely notify customers whenever their bill is held in our billing system. The City's Department of Information Technology estimates the enhancement will be fully developed by fall. Assuming testing goes smoothly, it would then be implemented. Over the past three years, the Department of Information Technology has developed several enhancements at the request of the Public Utilities Department to strengthen the SAP billing system.

Currently, when a water meter read is significantly outside the typical range based on historic usage, Public Utilities staff manually investigates the account to determine the cause of the abnormal read. This can be due to a leak on the property, a manual misread, a meter malfunction or another issue. When accounts require staff investigation, the bills are delayed until the investigation is resolved. The Public Utilities Department’s process is to notify a customer via phone, email or letter before releasing multiple bills. Due to staffing challenges, the Public Utilities Department is, unfortunately, unable to investigate each account immediately. More information for customers, including how to read your meter, requesting a meter read and submitting a meter read, can be found at: www.sandiego.gov/public-utilities/customer-service/billing/water-meter-read.

We are always willing to work with our customers. We understand phone and email response times are long but encourage customers to reach out if they haven’t received a bill. While it may seem overwhelming to receive more than one bill all at once, customers can pay off their past-due balance over time with no penalty or interest charged. Any customer who did not timely receive their water utility bill and had a leak during that billing period, can contact the Public Utilities Department at 619-515-3500 and request an adjustment. General information about leak adjustments can be found at: www.sandiego.gov/public-utilities/customer-service/billing/adjustments.

WATCH RELATED: Not receiving water bills? Here’s how to check for leaks and how to contact the City of San Diego

At CBS 8, we are always Working for You and our community. This is a station promise that we will go the extra mile to solve a problem our audience can’t solve themselves. We want to hear your ideas on how we can cover and help our community. If you have a story idea, please email us at [email protected].