HOUSTON – A Houston couple is purposefully overpaying their water bill, because they say the city is charging them wrong.
The Kemps, Wendy and Bellamy, moved to their Second Ward home roughly 14 months ago. For the first four months, they said they didn’t receive a water bill until they called the city. Then, they were sent bills but there were still issues.
“I felt the estimated usage didn’t look right so I started tracking with our water meter,” Wendy Kemp said. “And we have a brand-new water meter because it’s a new house and I realized that they were very far apart, and we were being enormously under billed of our actual usage.”
Their water meter currently says they’ve used 45,000 gallons of water but the city charged them for 28,000.
“That’s almost $500 in water that they haven’t actually billed us,” Wendy Kemp told us.
For months, Wendy has made a routine of heading out to her meter, checking it, then visiting the city’s website to estimate how much she believes she should be paying.
“So, I’ve actually had to start a spreadsheet where I track where I read [the meter] and on what day and then how much I paid, how many gallons I paid for because I have to estimate my bill,” she said.
KPRC 2′s Rilwan Balogun asked the couple why the keep paying more than they’re charged.
WENDY KEMP: “Because I don’t want to be surprised by a huge bill.”
RILWAN: “What’s your concern? What are you worried about?”
WENDY KEMP: “What’s happened to other people, getting a sudden $3,000 water bill at some point.”
RILWAN: “And you think that’s possible?”
WENDY KEMP: “It think it will happen. They’ll eventually see there’s a huge discrepancy in their records and our actual meter reading and they’re gonna want to charge us for all that water.”
RILWAN: “And so that’s why you’re paying more in case the city comes back later saying, ‘actually this is what you should have been paying all of this time.”
WENDY KEMP: “I’d rather pay a hundred dollars a month and have a credit at the city then to end up with as huge, unexpected bill.”
The couple recalls getting a notice on a bill to stop paying their bill because they’ve received so much credit.
“There was a time we didn’t pay for like three months,” said Wendy Kemp since they have a large credit.
They allowed Rilwan to look at their account, which showed they currently have $175 credit.
Despite the first ‘stop paying’ notice from the city, the couple continues paying more than they’re billed.
“We just ignored it,” said Bellamy Kemp. “Keep doing what we’re doing. ‘Cause the government’s going to come back, the city’s going to come back and want that money eventually and we’d rather pay it little at a time than one big lump amount.”
The public works spokesperson said the Kemps should call the city’s Customer Account Services ‘to sort out the differences between the readings.’
