Expect to be over billed when you attempt to have your water turned off upon moving out.
It has been some time since I have moved from one place to another with this particular utility being in my name. When I called the company to ask to have my water turned off, I assumed this was going to be a very easy process that should involved little to no problems. Tell them I am moving, and then we find the right date for my services to be shut off, move, and wait for the final bill to come so that I can pay it, and move on.
That was NOT the case. I ended up being billed twice for minimum water services. Read that correctly. I got billed for minimum services (because the household did not go over the minimum require usage during the month) twice. Once for the 30 day billing for $17.80, and then I received a SECOND bill for $17.80 for FOUR DAYS of usage after they had read the bill for the monthly.
This seemed a bit ridiculous in my opinion to be billed almost $40 for this. When I called, the customer service representative should have informed me of when my meter was being read, so that I could cut the water off then, or they should have inofrmed me that I would have been billed an aditional $18 for any usage below the minimum for any amount of days that we kept our water on. So even if our bill got read on the 30th day of the month (for hypothetical purposes of this analogy, lets say it was the 29th of whatever month you chose), but they were not cutting our services off until the end of the month, and we flushed a toilet ONCE, on that 1 day service was still going, we would STILL get billed $17.80 for minimum usage.
I attempted to dispute this charge, wanting to just be billed for the usage during all this time (a total of 34 days). I had to go through several people, finally speaking to Office Representative 3, Violet Trimble, who, I thought could change my billing. None of these people did a single thing to really help me, constantly arguing policy.
This seems to be a small way that the Nashville government finds ways to steal money from its citizens. The worst part is, you have no other option to obtain water for your home. So, I am now forced to pay a bill that, even if it is the same, or close to the same price, I would have easily paid it with no problems had they just explained things, or better yet, just extended the usage out to the end of the month, making it a bill of 34 days instead of 30 and showing the usage of it all. BUT, this way looks like, and I believe is, complete manipulation of the citizens by the government to pocket more money from people who don't always have the ability to pay, you know, because of policy. read more