Utility sets deadline to refund fees from glitch

Central Arkansas Water will refund the 2,224 accounts that were incorrectly levied late fees by the end of next week, the agency’s public affairs director told its Board of Commissioners on Thursday.

Between mid-December and the end of February, a glitch in the utility’s updated software system mistakenly assessed late fees on the accounts of customers who didn’t send in payments because they had credits that covered their monthly bills.

The water agency first realized the error in January, but the software company didn’t fix the issue until March 1. It wasn’t until the end of March that the agency pushed the software company to provide a list of which accounts were affected so that it could refund the customers.

The company worked with the agency to narrow down the list of customers to about 2,800 last week. By Thursday, the agency had hand checked each account and determined that 2,224 had been charged a late fee incorrectly due to the software glitch, Public Affairs Director John Tynan said.

Tynan and other utility officials gave a presentation Thursday to the water agency’s Board of Directors about the difficulties experienced during the upgrade of the billing software. Chief Operating Officer Thad Luther said a total of 149 problems with the system upgrade were identified, and 57 have yet to be fixed. Besides the erroneous late fees, none of the other glitches affect customers’ bills, officials said.

Commissioner Roby Robertson questioned why it took software company Systems and Software so long to correct the late-fees problem. The water agency’s chief executive officer, Graham Rich, said that he would make no excuse for the company but noted that it was dealing with numerous problems at once and didn’t know the full scope of the problem in the beginning.

“Our standard is so high that even one incorrect bill does not meet what we expect our system to do,” Rich said.

Tynan said now that all of the customer accounts with problems have been identified, the agency will start working on crediting back the charges.

In all, $7,257 was collected in error. The average incorrect late fee charged was $3.26 per account. Sixty of the accounts have already been refunded because those customers called the water agency about the error, Tynan said.

He assured the commissioners that the utility will do a test run before it uses the software to refund the accounts to ensure that the process goes smoothly.

Customers who were affected will either be notified on their bills when they are credited the late-fee amount or will be sent a separate letter notifying them of the mistake, Tynan said, adding that the agency hasn’t determined which method it will use.

Robertson cautioned the agency’s staff to do more testing on the front end when changes such as software upgrades are made to help prevent similar mistakes from happening.

Luther told the commission that testing was done before the new software was used, but he and Rich noted that several circumstances prompted them to speed up the process to have the new software in place before new rates took effect Jan. 1.