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As I sit here [was] on the phone with City of Austin utilities -- a fiance who claims this is the last straw for us, two children I love dearly who may be taken away from me and all because of the first-ever interruption of our water service -- I am hopeful that I will find some insight and maybe help prevent another unsuspecting citizen from falling into the same trap as I have. Almost 3 years ago I rented a home from a homeowner in south Austin who used Austin Property Management Pros to manage their rental property.
After the second month of living in the home, a line in the irrigation system popped a cap and began running water non-stop approximately 2.5 feet underground in my backyard. The popped capped impacted our water usage for approximately 5-6 weeks -- the gusher (it was more than a leak) extended into multiple billing cycles. This continued for so long for several reasons:
1) Whomever installed the irrigation system did so in perhaps the worst way imaginable -- a line in the system was tied into the main water line.
2) Because the irrigation was tied to the main waterline, there was no cutoff valve prohibiting the water from going through that line in the system, even when the system was not in use.
3) Therefore, even if we had not had any outboard sprinkler system devices (i.e. sprinkler heads, the electronic scheduler, etc.) and whether or not that system was in use, that cap would have still popped off and caused water to run without our knowing it. A simpler way of putting it -- shutting off or dismantling the sprinkler system entirely would not have stopped the leak, if there had been any way to identify that there was a leak in the first place.
4) The weather was also a factor. When we moved into the home it was August of 2013. South Austin experienced some of the heaviest rains in a long while at that time. There were puddles in the downslope of the backyard that collected before the sprinkler system began to run constantly. The fact that the puddles were slow to dry in that one particular spot appeared to be the result of poor drainage.
5) In a city of nearly 1 million people, the single water service provider has not developed enough infrastructure to provide a monitoring system for identifying potential leaks and abnormal usage, and then alert its customers. I am no computer programmer, but even I could effectively write all the code they would need to assess usage week-to-week and generate an email that says "We wonder if you are installing a pool; you have used 5X the water that you used in the 3rd week of your previous billing cycle. Call us about your water usage, if you think this is a reporting error." Now that this experienced has carried over for nearly 3 years, it is apparent that the city of Austin would have no interest in its customer disabling a faulty system and preventing a leak -- in all places the city of Austin Utilities company -- at least as a matter of customer service policies and billing protocols -- does not value the conservation of its city's water. It values the collection of the almighty dollar.
Fast forward 3 years later -- the City of Austin within a month of billing us roughly $4,000 dollars for services unknown, undesired and unusable to us, we -- without full knowledge or the ability to articulate the nature of what had happened -- furnished documentation from a tech that was sent by our landlord's Austin Property Management Pros representative to fix the leak. The documentation was the receipt and work order left by that tech and provided in order to reduce the bill. Herein lies the root of the problem. The city of Austin also likes sticking it to the little guy. We moved forward with the City of Austin without pursuing the landlord or property manager because we had just moved in, had 10 months remaining in our lease and couldn't afford to have our services disconnected. I considered it ok to deal with and prevent interruption, because at the time I had a little bit of money and was making good money -- I had not been laid off that December yet, because it wasn't yet December (2 months later that is). With 2 young children we decided to allocate our resources to the preservation of service and relationships and hoped to pursue the proper restitution at a later date. Until today we had been able to do so without service interruption.
That said, today is not about non-payment or refusal to pay our power bill. Today became about numbers in a computer. The City of Austin told me, simply because it can, that it '...Understands completely that this is not [my] fault or responsibility, but since it had done everything 'by [its] book' and the length of time, and high balance amount -- although we know you didn't create it -- we have to subject you to the same penalties and policy applications as we do every account [number] designated as non-paying/delinquent -- even though your circumstances are clearly and identifiably different. All that was said on the basis of "because, we answer to the City of Austin, Austin's city council."
Additionally, the mantra of "your dispute should be with the landlord" was repeated in annoying fashion. Given the fact that I have quarreled with the landlord about it to some degree, this was inconsequential and bordering on an insult of my intelligence. While we lived in the home where this occurred -- which BTW, did I mention that we haven't for almost a year -- to prevent awkwardness we maintained a delicate approach to handling the dispute, but we certainly probed for recourse more than once. While we lived in the home Austin Property Management Pros misinformed us that this was a matter for a renter's insurance company -- a friend who is a lawyer and who does real estate assured me that it was not an issue for renter's insurance.
Also, the supervisor flat told me that he had the authority to restore my service -- and although he believed me and in everything that I was saying -- he simply would not be restoring the service, because we didn't pass the test of having called, communicated or paid on the account well enough, although service was never disconnected in almost 3 years of our being their customer. Worse than that, he had to later backpedal from this position upon learning that I had produced a report and inquiry submitted via the online contact portal based on extensive research and analysis of our billing that I conducted going back for as many months as records were available (24). He acquiesced the point and still no movement. All he cared about was that we pay a balance in the amount of $4106, or we can no longer be provided water service by the only water service provider in Austin. And I had just paid a payment of $171.02 only five days ago on 2/9, which posted on 2/11.
As it stands, with nearly 31 months of service under our belt and no prior service interruptions to speak of, and in spite of our having been thrust into a situation where the best option at the time was to bear a burden for someone else's responsibility, we end up on the receiving end of a $4106 ultimatum, or else. Of all the things that would have ended my family, I hardly thought it would in any way involve Austin Property Management Pros (a year after leaving them behind) and water service, provided by the City of Austin Utilities.
What would you do if you were me in this situation; if the resources to fight the landlord or the city were out of reach? Who would you call? How would you save your family from dissolving over a water bill?
1. Save every bit of documentation you have; emails, bills, notices. Make a log of every call and every person you spoke with, to the best of your memory, before you forget the details.
2. Call the city council member for your district. Make an appointment to talk to them or their staff in person. Maybe attend a city council meeting or working session and speak during public comment about your plight.
3. Call the Austin Tenants Council. The landlord may have been in violation if he did not maintain the property in a way where you could get water service.
4. Call the media. Fox 7 and the Statesman are good options.
1. Save every bit of documentation you have; emails, bills, notices. Make a log of every call and every person you spoke with, to the best of your memory, before you forget the details.
2. Call the city council member for your district. Make an appointment to talk to them or their staff in person. Maybe attend a city council meeting or working session and speak during public comment about your plight.
3. Call the Austin Tenants Council. The landlord may have been in violation if he did not maintain the property in a way where you could get water service.
4. Call the media. Fox 7 and the Statesman are good options.
Thank you, very much, for taking the time to read my lengthy post and to share these great ideas. I've reached out to the City Council and the City Manager, but I did not think to include the media and I was not aware that there was an Austin tenant's council.
The craziest thing of all, is that we have moved -- a year ago. At the root of it all is something that happened in Oct. 2013. And City of Austin Utilities - after "completely empathizing with the situation and understanding that this is not our burden to bear," in the very next breath tells me flatly, that "although [they] could help me, they won't help me because.... well... 'protocol'... and 'city council'.
Anxious to get the word out to some of the media and to be in touch with the Austin Tenants Council. Thank you again.
As I sit here [was] on the phone with City of Austin utilities -- a fiance who claims this is the last straw for us, two children I love dearly who may be taken away from me and all because of the first-ever interruption of our water service -- I am hopeful that I will find some insight and maybe help prevent another unsuspecting citizen from falling into the same trap as I have. Almost 3 years ago I rented a home from a homeowner in south Austin who used Austin Property Management Pros to manage their rental property.
After the second month of living in the home, a line in the irrigation system popped a cap and began running water non-stop approximately 2.5 feet underground in my backyard. The popped capped impacted our water usage for approximately 5-6 weeks -- the gusher (it was more than a leak) extended into multiple billing cycles. This continued for so long for several reasons:
1) Whomever installed the irrigation system did so in perhaps the worst way imaginable -- a line in the system was tied into the main water line.
2) Because the irrigation was tied to the main waterline, there was no cutoff valve prohibiting the water from going through that line in the system, even when the system was not in use.
3) Therefore, even if we had not had any outboard sprinkler system devices (i.e. sprinkler heads, the electronic scheduler, etc.) and whether or not that system was in use, that cap would have still popped off and caused water to run without our knowing it. A simpler way of putting it -- shutting off or dismantling the sprinkler system entirely would not have stopped the leak, if there had been any way to identify that there was a leak in the first place.
4) The weather was also a factor. When we moved into the home it was August of 2013. South Austin experienced some of the heaviest rains in a long while at that time. There were puddles in the downslope of the backyard that collected before the sprinkler system began to run constantly. The fact that the puddles were slow to dry in that one particular spot appeared to be the result of poor drainage.
5) In a city of nearly 1 million people, the single water service provider has not developed enough infrastructure to provide a monitoring system for identifying potential leaks and abnormal usage, and then alert its customers. I am no computer programmer, but even I could effectively write all the code they would need to assess usage week-to-week and generate an email that says "We wonder if you are installing a pool; you have used 5X the water that you used in the 3rd week of your previous billing cycle. Call us about your water usage, if you think this is a reporting error." Now that this experienced has carried over for nearly 3 years, it is apparent that the city of Austin would have no interest in its customer disabling a faulty system and preventing a leak -- in all places the city of Austin Utilities company -- at least as a matter of customer service policies and billing protocols -- does not value the conservation of its city's water. It values the collection of the almighty dollar.
Fast forward 3 years later -- the City of Austin within a month of billing us roughly $4,000 dollars for services unknown, undesired and unusable to us, we -- without full knowledge or the ability to articulate the nature of what had happened -- furnished documentation from a tech that was sent by our landlord's Austin Property Management Pros representative to fix the leak. The documentation was the receipt and work order left by that tech and provided in order to reduce the bill. Herein lies the root of the problem. The city of Austin also likes sticking it to the little guy. We moved forward with the City of Austin without pursuing the landlord or property manager because we had just moved in, had 10 months remaining in our lease and couldn't afford to have our services disconnected. I considered it ok to deal with and prevent interruption, because at the time I had a little bit of money and was making good money -- I had not been laid off that December yet, because it wasn't yet December (2 months later that is). With 2 young children we decided to allocate our resources to the preservation of service and relationships and hoped to pursue the proper restitution at a later date. Until today we had been able to do so without service interruption.
That said, today is not about non-payment or refusal to pay our power bill. Today became about numbers in a computer. The City of Austin told me, simply because it can, that it '...Understands completely that this is not [my] fault or responsibility, but since it had done everything 'by [its] book' and the length of time, and high balance amount -- although we know you didn't create it -- we have to subject you to the same penalties and policy applications as we do every account [number] designated as non-paying/delinquent -- even though your circumstances are clearly and identifiably different. All that was said on the basis of "because, we answer to the City of Austin, Austin's city council."
Additionally, the mantra of "your dispute should be with the landlord" was repeated in annoying fashion. Given the fact that I have quarreled with the landlord about it to some degree, this was inconsequential and bordering on an insult of my intelligence. While we lived in the home where this occurred -- which BTW, did I mention that we haven't for almost a year -- to prevent awkwardness we maintained a delicate approach to handling the dispute, but we certainly probed for recourse more than once. While we lived in the home Austin Property Management Pros misinformed us that this was a matter for a renter's insurance company -- a friend who is a lawyer and who does real estate assured me that it was not an issue for renter's insurance.
Also, the supervisor flat told me that he had the authority to restore my service -- and although he believed me and in everything that I was saying -- he simply would not be restoring the service, because we didn't pass the test of having called, communicated or paid on the account well enough, although service was never disconnected in almost 3 years of our being their customer. Worse than that, he had to later backpedal from this position upon learning that I had produced a report and inquiry submitted via the online contact portal based on extensive research and analysis of our billing that I conducted going back for as many months as records were available (24). He acquiesced the point and still no movement. All he cared about was that we pay a balance in the amount of $4106, or we can no longer be provided water service by the only water service provider in Austin. And I had just paid a payment of $171.02 only five days ago on 2/9, which posted on 2/11.
As it stands, with nearly 31 months of service under our belt and no prior service interruptions to speak of, and in spite of our having been thrust into a situation where the best option at the time was to bear a burden for someone else's responsibility, we end up on the receiving end of a $4106 ultimatum, or else. Of all the things that would have ended my family, I hardly thought it would in any way involve Austin Property Management Pros (a year after leaving them behind) and water service, provided by the City of Austin Utilities.
What would you do if you were me in this situation; if the resources to fight the landlord or the city were out of reach? Who would you call? How would you save your family from dissolving over a water bill?
We did have this happen (pipe broke while we were on vacation). The city of austin refunded a substantial part of the overage spanning 2 bills (around 3 weeks). I believe we had to pay the bill first. You might be able to go to your bank/credit union to get an unsecured line of credit to temporarily pay the bill if you dont have time.
It is your responsibility to keep a 6 month emergency fund to handle small financial emergencies which are guaranteed to happen in life. If you dont have one, that is your choice, but you should own it.
If they hadnt fixed my bill that would just have been life. I dont blame other people (i.e. the city) for not monitoring it close enough.
The landlord is ultimately responsible since your lease contract most likely says he has to keep things in good repair.
edit:
we also dealt with our issue in a timely manner. Within a month of the issue happening. You letting it drag on just makes it harder and harder to get it resolved.
Whatever goodwill you might otherwise have had here (and it seems like there would be plenty) cannot really be utilized this long after the fact. When you have the high ground, you need to use it. Probably that ship has sailed and you're out $4,000 unless you can get an attorney to go after the landlord for it.
Try to negotiate what is owed down. You may be able to get the amount owed down to $2000. Simply pay it and move on. Attorney's fees will be much higher than that.
Or simply work out a payment plan.
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Thank you for the great ideas
