Hundreds of San Diego utility customers were erroneously billed when they should have been receiving federal COVID relief funds, the city of San Diego said Tuesday.
In the most egregious incident of the 690 discovered by the city on June 4, a customer who owns a multifamily property with several separate accounts was charged nearly $24,500. That customer and all others were are in the process of being refunded, the city said.
A spokesperson for the city said the error occurred on June 3 when the IT department and an outside contractor were applying federal COVID relief payments to qualifying customer accounts.
"Due to the way in which the credits were applied, payments previously covered by these customers then showed in the system as “unpaid” and were automatically re-charged," the spokesperson said.
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Jonathan Behnke, director of the city's IT department said the department is implementing processes to ensure the error doesn't happen again, but did not elaborate. The city spokesperson said they are still working to determine next steps.
"We took immediate action to address this mistake, and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that customers have experienced as a result of this issue," Behnke said, adding the department has been
Customers who had a charge over $10 will be issued a refund. Any charge less than $10 will be refunded as a credit on their bill, the city said. The city will also refund bank overdraft charges or other fees or penalties that customers may have incurred and will seek reimbursement from the IT vendor for those costs.
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A letter to affected customers said the reversal of the payment is expected within 12-36 hours.
The city's public utilities department serves more than 283,000 residential and business customers.
In 2018, an NBC 7 Investigation revealed the city's new smart water meter program had experienced glitches that overcharged millions of dollars from their customers.
The smart water meter program was halted and the city went back to a manual method of checking water meters. If a billing error was suspected, the city would pause that customer's bill then send a representative out to check the meter.
But this slow process resulted in a massive billing backlog. Last year, the utilities department faced backlash from residents who said they could go months without seeing a bill and who said the department was impossible to get a hold of. Some were getting retroactive bills in the thousands.
The city has since switched back to the smart water meter program.
The utilities department said they have been working to improve customer communication over the past year. Following the most recent billing error, the department said they are in the process of developing an online customer self-service portal and other technology enhancements intended to better serve residents and businesses.
