Greater Western Water billing bungle leaves households high and dry

Thousands of Greater Western Water customers may rack up massive back-bills after a botched computer system failed to send out water bills 18 months ago.

More than 110,000 Melbourne households still don’t have correct water bills after more than a year because of a long-running computer glitch.

The billing bungle at Greater Western Water emerged 18 months ago and despite some improvements the chaos means one in five of the corporation’s customers still don’t know how much they owe.

The state’s utilities regulator, the Essential Services Commission, has confirmed it is investigating.

The invoicing gaffe means many households will end up with massive back bills, although they will have more time to pay.

Customers may face bill shock in coming months.

Greater Western Water also has had problems processing direct debits with the payments paused without customers’ knowledge. The self-service portal was also down for a time.

The state’s Energy and Water Ombudsman Catherine Wolthuizen said five separate investigations were launched last year into systemic issues and she remained concerned that Greater Western Water customers would continue to have complaints about their bills.

“We are also concerned that any future debt collections activities may lead to financial issues for customers and restrictions to their water supply,’’ she said.

The ombudsman’s office said that for the past financial year, it had received more than five times the number of GWW complaints – 1864 – than the previous year.

Some customers who complained had received “goodwill gesture’’ payments of up to $250 to compensate for the headache.

Account holders were emailed in recent weeks and told their latest water bill was delayed because of “technical issues”.

The problems began with the merger of two water corporations.

The corporation’s managing director Maree Lang will quit at the end of July after she and the board announced a “shared understanding that this is the right time for a leadership transition”.

Greater Western Water was formed in July 2021 when Western Water and City West Water merged. The new corporation covers the Melbourne CBD, most suburbs west of the Yarra and locations north to Lancefield.

The invoice mix-up occurred when the billing systems from previous two entities were combined in early 2023.

Ms Wolthuizen said her office had received complaints about missing concessions,

poor customer service, long call wait times and issues with apartment buildings, such as failure to correctly charge individual customers.

Greater Western Water said it had temporarily extended his call centre hours although one customer told the Herald Sun she had waited three hours to talk to a staff member.

A corporation spokeswoman acknowledged that the problems had been “a frustrating and challenging experience that has not met customer expectations’’.

“Greater Western Water is continuing to resolve billing delays affecting some customers, following technical issues with our billing system. We’re making steady progress with almost four in five customer accounts back on track and continue working to finalise more complex delayed bills.

“We are committed to learning from these challenges, improving our customers’ experience, and restoring direct debit functionality that we know continues to impact customers.”

Originally published as Greater Western Water billing bungle leaves households high and dry