Back-logged bills troublesome

I don’t know how many customers have looked at their recent water bills, but I just paid attention to “dates” and was surprised to see on my April 1 billing date that is was for the period Jan. 10 to Feb. 9! When I called customer service, they said the holidays put them behind schedule converting meter readings to timely billings and they were trying to catch up a few days at a time so no one gets an unusual large bill playing “catch-up.” The next reading was Feb. 28 (or thereabouts), which, of course, I’ve not received yet.

So here I sit with a billing, and more to come, for our renter that moved out March 31, thinking the bills were up to date. So I won’t be collecting from the previous renter for them! And here I sit wondering, if we have a water leak like we had several years back. I won’t be discovering it till way past hearing about it on a subsequent billing. Customer service assured me that if the meter reader reports an abnormal reading, a report is filed and the meter person goes out and double checks the reading and then contacts the owner. But this didn’t happen with our previous experience.

If the Everett Public Works is so back-logged in getting billings out in a timely manner with the meter readings, shouldn’t something be done? The customer service today didn’t offer any hope of their systems improving any time soon.

Sue Cozzens

Snohomish