Athens Utilities billing

[djmaxwell]

Originally Posted by johnsonkk

Thanks for posting. Had no idea that when you provided a credit card, for the utility to acces, that you had to pay a fee. If at the utility planning meetings, no way would I have thought customers would pay extra to have their credit card accessed.

It depends. Limestone Country Water does not charge the fee. Municipally run services usually pass on the credit card fees.

[RocketDawg]

Originally Posted by djmaxwell

It depends. Limestone Country Water does not charge the fee. Municipally run services usually pass on the credit card fees.

Madison Utilities charges a fee.

For several months, you'd not get your bill in the mail until a couple of days until it was overdue. There was no way to mail in a check and have it leave Madison, go to Birmingham (losing the mail sorting facility we once had here made no sense), and come back a couple of days later and avoid the late fee.

They never said anything about extending the grace period. I paid my bill over the phone a couple of times using Visa and they charged a cc fee ($2 or $3, as I recall).

I think they finally got things straightened out with the mailouts.

[RocketDawg]

Originally Posted by Preston3124

A different utility, but my most recent water bill from Madison Utilities has me confused. It was delivered in my mail on 1/31/22 and it reads-

Billing Date 1/11/22

Total Due $23.11

Date Due 2/06/22

So far so good right?

But then it says-

Amount Due if Paid After 1/29/22 $25.42

So apparently I owe a late fee if I don’t pay it 8 days before the due date and 2 days before I even received it?

I paid the $23.11 the day I received the bill but I am interested to see if they charge me a late fee next month. Even though it is only $2.31 I’ll give them a call if they do.

I didn't see your post before I made my post - but I thought they'd gotten the issues fixed. For the past couple of months, we've gotten our mailed bill a couple of weeks before the late date. Apparently billing is sill in a mess. But I get an email close to 3 weeks before the late date so I know the amount - not sure if we've gotten the paper bill yet or not. One thing's for sure - they shouldn't be charging a cc fee until they can get things straight on their end.

[preguntas]

Many businesses are making changes in their billing due to the postal changes that went into effect at the end of 2021.
Creating a situation where the postal service is suggesting an eight-to-ten-day delivery time for first class mail is also, for me, suggesting that the service is now useless for time sensitive mail.

I have been an auto pay person for decades. The protections offered by the banks and even recipients, sometimes, just negates any fear of fraud for me. I have no problems, ever, and once or twice in twenty years those problems were not mine because it is too easy to verify what you have initiated or not.

Since the postal changes I have started notice outrageous delivery times, however it does not matter a lot to me because i am well handled online and don't write checks to anyone for years.

[harry chickpea]

WAFF did a follow-up article. PNC bank is collecting the mail in Bham, and then re-mailing it to a processing center in Atlanta.

The mayor says he got hit as well, tried to accept responsibility while at the same time blaming others. He also complained that people need to approach the utilities first, before going to social media. Uhhhh,I did that, as have many others.

What was that Disney kid club theme song???

[Preston3124]

Originally Posted by Preston3124

A different utility, but my most recent water bill from Madison Utilities has me confused. It was delivered in my mail on 1/31/22 and it reads-

Billing Date 1/11/22

Total Due $23.11

Date Due 2/06/22

So far so good right?

But then it says-

Amount Due if Paid After 1/29/22 $25.42

So apparently I owe a late fee if I don’t pay it 8 days before the due date and 2 days before I even received it?

I paid the $23.11 the day I received the bill but I am interested to see if they charge me a late fee next month. Even though it is only $2.31 I’ll give them a call if they do.

As a follow up to this post, I received my February bill and they did not charge me a penalty so I assume they knew about the mistake on the previous billing statement. This bill has a Date Due of 3/1/22 and an Amount Due if Paid After date of 3/1/22 so that part looks normal again.