Company clears up utilities billing blooper

City staff say wrong number caused error

A credit card processing company caused a billing blooper that created confusion for the Lorain Utilities Department and consumers across the nation.

The situation has been resolved, according to the city.

Lorain Safety-Service Director Dan Given announced the resolution Dec. 8.

In some financial transactions, credit card payment processor First Data erroneously listed the merchant identification number for the Lorain Utilities Department, said Paul Wilson, city

utilities director.

That caused people to believe the Lorain Utilities Department was charging them, Wilson said.

The city did not wrongly take money from anyone and did not receive any money due to the errors, he said.

No city workers were responsible for the mix-up and none were attempting to use city computers or accounts for any fraudulent transactions, Wilson said.

Given published a copy of a notice from First Data.

Affected transactions were processed in November while the company was “reprocessing a select number of transactions,” according to First Data.

Also, affected consumers saw the error on November credit card statements, but will see corrections applied to December credit card statements, according to First Data.

“We apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused,” the company notice said.

On Dec. 1, the Lorain Utilities Department started getting telephone calls from people outside the city complaining about charges by the Utilities Department

on their bank and credit statements, Wilson said.

Calls came in from people as far away as Washington and Arizona asking why the city was charging them, he said.

“Obviously, we had no clue,” Wilson said.

City staff thought some fraud may be taking place, but could find no links between the city Utilities Department and the callers, he said.

Staff from Lorain’s Information Technology Department and the city Auditor’s Office and Treasurer’s Office also began examining the circumstances.

Auditor’s staff noticed

a problem with financial records from First Data, and that in turn led to discovery of the problem this week, Wilson said.

It appeared no customers in the city of Lorain were affected; some North Ridgeville residents were the only Lorain County residents involved in the erroneous transactions, he said.

“It had nothing to do with us,” Wilson said. “It was First Data that made the mistake and for whatever reason, they used our merchant ID number.

“They service customers nationwide. We were just the unlucky ones that had the merchant ID number.”