gchildress@heraldsun.com; 918-1046
Chapel Hill -- OWASA announced Wednesday that it made an error in bills sent Oct. 16 to 500 nonresidential customers.
Water use by the 500 customers was incorrectly billed at the peak seasonal water rate of $7.09, instead of the new off-peak seasonal rate of $3.73, which went into effect Oct. 1. Officials said the mistake overbilled customers about $20,000.
OWASA's next bill for these customers will include a credit to correct the affected balances. The dollar amounts of the errors are limited because they involve charges for one to six days of water use from Oct. 1 until meters were read through Oct. 6.
If a customer is billed for service from Sept. 6 through a meter reading on Oct. 6, for example, the old rates apply to service from Sept. 6-30, and new rates apply to service from Oct. 1-6.
Greg Feller, OWASA's public affairs administrator, said the error was caught during the checking of samples of final bills sent to customers closing OWASA accounts.
"In the process of checking final bills, someone in processing noticed that some of the bills weren't right," Feller said.
Feller said OWASA's largest nonresidential customers, UNC Chapel Hill and UNC Hospital, were not affected by the billing error.
OWASA bills for water and sewer service about once a month, and pro-rates bills when there is a change in rates, as occurred on Oct. 1.
The affected nonresidential customers are in Carrboro, the Southern Village and downtown Chapel Hill.
Individually metered residential customers, who pay increasing block water conservation rates, are not affected.
"We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers, and we have made process changes to prevent recurrence of this problem," Jane Showerman, OWASA's customer service manager, said in a news release.
OWASA is a public, nonprofit agency that provides water, sewer and reclaimed water services to the Carrboro-Chapel Hill communities.
