WATER BILL WOES GROW
Enmax customer complaints stream in
A deluge of complaints is flowing into my email inbox following a Friday column about Calgary families charged exorbitant water bills by Enmax for the City of Calgary. More than three dozen people contacted Postmedia in the wake of a story highlighting an almost $4,000 water bill sent to one young Calgary family for water they couldn’t possibly have used.
Juan and Fabiola Faundez say they were shocked in April when they received a $1,657 bill — which included $1,378.43 for water and waste water charges.
“We have our utility payments come right out of our bank account and this charge left us with just a few pennies in our account,” said Fabiola, from the couple’s Harvest Hills home they share with their 14-yearold son.
“They came and changed the meter and now everything is fine, but we got stuck paying almost $1,400 for water we know we didn’t use. We don’t have any leaking toilets or taps or anything.
“Everything miraculously stopped leaking when Enmax installed a new water meter. Now our bills are only about $70 per month for both water and wastewater during the peak water season when we’re watering our lawn.”
They said the technician who changed their meter told them the amount of water they used would have more than filled up their basement several times over.
The couple, who own a maintenance company, say they are not impressed with the service they have received from Enmax and the city.
“If we treated our customers like they treated us, we’d be out of business, no question,” said 40-year-old Fabiola.
Some of the stories of overcharging would be funny if they didn’t represent such an outrageous expropriation by city hall of its citizens’ money for no goods and services at all.
For the January-February period, Jos Jonkers received the highest water bill he’s ever received from Enmax, the cityowned utility.
What makes his $300 water charge so bizarre is not so much the amount, when compared with other overcharges. It’s that the 62-year-old retired geologist and his wife were away in Palm Springs, Calif., at the time, and he had turned off his main water valve, as he always does prior to travelling.
“The meter should have indicated that our consumption was zero, instead we had a $300 bill,” said Jonkers.
“I argued with (Enmax) and I wasn’t making any progress so I paid the bill because it wasn’t significant enough to fight city hall over. They kept telling me that I had a leak, and I said, ‘ how can that be, because the water was turned off.’”
Jonkers said he and his wife will monitor their water meter very closely from now on.
“They kind of have you over a barrel. You can’t prove anything and they’re a monopoly. It’s not like you can get your water from someone else,” he said. “What annoys me is, don’t tell me that they don’t know there are flaws in the system. I complained, how many other people have complained?”
The City of Calgary couldn’t answer that question, or how much money the city has refunded to its customers over the past 12 months. The only return call I received Friday was after 4 p.m., from Rob Spackman, director of water resources with the City of Calgary. Too late for him to obtain any answers to those and other questions.
“We do go through a process with our customers to really look at their individual circumstances and we look at a number of factors when we’re determining what that adjustment should be and certainly a real motivation for us is we understand that this is a difficult situation for these customers,” said Spackman.
“They’ve received a bill that they weren’t expecting and we definitely feel for them and we understand that it can be a surprise and a shock even and it can create anxiety and frustration and we certainly want to work with these customers through their individual circumstances and see what resolution there is. That’s the approach we take.”
Numerous customers however have said they were treated poorly when they questioned an unusually high bill and many have been left in tears as they were forced to beg and plead for longer payment terms.
Orleen Peck said Natalie, a senior citizen she knows, was billed $2,330.98 by Enmax bill in January, when she was out of the country and no one was in her house.
“The city did check the meter, determined it was defective and replaced it, but they only refunded $600 to Natalie,” said Peck, a certified accountant. In other words, the city pocketed $1,700 of Natalie’s money for their faulty and defective product.
When asked, Spackman said the city uses Badger water meters.
“The meters that we use are mechanical devices,” he explained. “They will not advance unless water is flowing through them.”
However, some customers who contacted Postmedia have Landis- GYR meters and one single woman who has suffered with numerous costly bills of as much as $600 has an Eister AMCO Scancoder.
Spackman said he had never heard of those meters being used.
It’s evident Enmax and the City are ignorant of the problems within their own system. There is no independent consumer protection ombudsman or office to help taxpayers deal with the bureaucracy. A customer calls crying on the phone and they can tell them to pay up or be cut off from receiving water.
Spackman said he stands by the joint statement issued by the city and Enmax claiming a leaky toilet can use up to 22 litres of water per minute, which can add up to $3,000 per month.
Northwest Calgary resident Cathy Sondergard said she ran her kitchen faucet at full throttle and it took 30 seconds to fill a four-litre jug, or eight litres per minute.
“A toilet may flush 10 litres in a matter of seconds, but the water supply filling the tank could not be faster than a kitchen tap,” she said. “The second issue here is could a household actually use $3,000 worth of water in a month?
“Based on a price of $3.25 per cubic metre of water (this includes sewage charge) using this much water would require two to three taps running full bore 24/7 for the whole month. Who could go to sleep at night with one tap running full out, let alone three?”
Spackman said he once had a leaky toilet and found it used 12 litres per minute. However, he could hear the water running.
None of the people hit with huge water bills had a leaking toilet.
Spackman would not acknowledge it’s possible the city and its utility has a problem.
That’s clearly a problem.
They kind of have you over a barrel. You can’t prove anything and they’re a monopoly. It’s not like you can get your water from someone else.