national multiple family submetering and allocation billing program ...

Late Fees
At the start of water billing service, 72.2% of the companies provide customers written
information on the late fee payment structure, while 11.1% (2 respondents) do not. 16.7% or
respondents indicated that they didn’t know or that the question wasn’t applicable.
Most service companies (66.7%) have their own specific time frame for late payment.
The average number of days is 17.8 with a range of 5 to 28 days. About 17% of billing
companies use the same late fee structure as the local utility, 11.1% allow until the next bill, and
1 company (5.6%) said they do not charge late fees.
Reported late fees ranged from $5 to $25 with 44.4% of respondents using a fixed dollar
amount. Another 22.2% charge late fees based on a percent of the amount billed, typically 5 to
10 percent, and 11.1% use the same late fee structure as the local utility. Nearly 17% of
respondents use their own distinct late fee structure.
Customer Complaints
All survey respondents (100%) reported that they have an established administrative
process to handle customer complaints and all but one respondent (94.4%) indicated that they
have gone through this complaint/dispute process with a customer. Typical customer complaints
are presented in Table 4.23.
Table 4.23 Common customer complaints to billing companies
Common Customer Complaints % of Companies Reporting
These Complaints*
Amount of bill (consumption charge) 88.9%
Service charge 27.8%
Bill itself 22.2%
Customer service information 16.7%
Bill format 11.1%
Other 11.1%
*Percents add to more than 100% as respondents could give more than one answer
National Administrative Guidelines
Survey respondents were generally favorable to the idea of national administrative
guidelines for the submetering and allocation billing industry, provided that the industry has real
input. More than 55% of respondents said they might support national guidelines if there were
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