Friday, February 19, 2010
Around Town / Phillips Metro Water's Return to Paper Billing Does Not Sound the Death Knell for the Mayor's Green Initiative
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 11:49 AM
Both by phone and email, Metro Water customers who had been receiving their bills electronically were informed that, starting this month, we'd once again be getting paper bills.
I set out to discover (1) why I can't just open up my online banking and be informed of how much I owe Metro Water like a civilized person; and (2) how, exactly, the Mayor's office squares a return to paper billing with Nashville's Green Initiative.
Sadly, for a blogger whose bread and butter is snarky trouble-making, it turns out there is a reasonable explanation.
I contacted Sonia Harvat over at Metro Water Services, and she explained:
The contract with our billing vendor expired and a new company has received the contract. Kubra, our past billing vendor, was a Check-Free partner and was able to offer electronic bill presentment services. The new vendor, Utilitec, is not a Check-Free partner and unfortunately Check-Free is not partnering with any new companies. Payment options should not change; you just will not be able to receive your bill electronically. You should still be able to pay it electronically through your bank. MWS and Utilitec are working to provide online bill presentment options for our customers but do not have an implementation date at this time.I even contacted the mayor's office, and Janel Lacy emailed me back. She said she'd also talked to Sonia Harvat, and "the mayor certainly encourages Metro Water to make electronic billing available again as soon as possible. Not only is it more sustainable, but it's also convenient for customers." Lacy and the mayor's office have full confidence in Metro Water's ability to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. People, I just don't know about this. Everyone I talked to was really helpful and responsive. And the situation is annoying, but everyone knows it's annoying, so they're working to fix it. To recap, in case you were wondering: They've switched vendors, and online billing is a kink that is being worked out. It's competence and responsiveness like this that can really knock a blogger off of her game, I tell you.
Comments (3)
Showing 1-3 of 3
It's awesome that Metro Water's Sonia Harvat got back to you. Salemtown is still waiting to hear back from her after we reported some abnormally high chlorine levels in the water out of our neighborhood taps in October. She told us MWS would conduct its own tests to determine: http://enclave-nashville.blogspot.com/2009/10/metro-water-rep-tells-salemtown.html
Cue Liz Garrigan on how I shouldn't hijack a more important Pith post with my trivial neighborhood concerns in 3...2...1...
like
dislike
Posted by
Mike Byrd
on 02/19/2010 at 2:08 PM
