About 1 1/2 or 2 years ago our City, Grass Valley California, contracted with Global Water Resources to take over the water and sewer billing. I didn't pay much attention then but wasn't happy about our City contracting with some out of state company to do what employees in our own city should be doing. Then on July 14 our water meter was replaced with a Smart Meter. Our old water meter was only 12 years old and I don't like the idea of Smart Meters in the first place. I was busy and didn't see them install our Smart Meter and being so busy I didn't read the old meter before they removed it and didn't think to check the new meter regularly after it was installed.
Last Wednesday, Oct. 5 I got a call from Global Water Resources. Through the conversation "about our sudden high water usage" I knew "Nicole" was preparing us for a very high bill. I didn't have any documentation handy so I really couldn't discuss much with her at the time. So later that day I went on line to Global Water to see what our bill said. The bill wasn't up yet even though they had already sent the paper bill out which we received the following day, Oct. 6. I opened the bill when it came and I was in shock! $388.55 for 2 months. The water usage read 70,664 gallons for 60 days. There are 2 of us living here. My husband has been in this house since 1962 and I have been here since 1980 and we have never used anywhere near 70,000 gallons of water in 60 days. We do not have a huge yard and we have no pool or spa. I got my water bills out for this period of time since 2009 and all of a sudden our water usage for this 2 month period more than tripled since 2009 yet our water usage habits have not changed and we had a cooler than normal summer this year.
On October 7 (4 days ago) I began checking the water meter daily at the same time, every 24 hours. Then I went to Global Water on line and checked their figures for daily usage. So far their figures for our daily water usage have differed greatly from my readings. Their figures are stating that we have used anywhere from 200 to almost 800 more gallons daily than the meter says we have used. I have printed out these figures from the website daily and the first 2 days that I printed them out they had totally different figures listed on the 2 printouts for the same days. The printout I did on October 7 stated we used 45 gallons of water on Oct. 6, but the printout I did on October 8 stated we used 336 gallons on Oct. 6. All the days listed on these two 7 day reports had different amounts listed on the two days I printed them out. There were also errors on the "previous and current" readings stated on our present bill and our last bill which included the new Smart Meter readings. I am going to the City of Grass Valley today to complain and am also calling Global Water Resources again and if they do not do something about our bill immediately I am filing a complaint with the California Public Utilities Commission before Oct. 19 when our bill is due and deposit a check for the bill with the CPUC to avoid water shutoff. This Global Water Resources seems very crooked to me and they need to be investigated and if necessary, a class action lawsuit filed against them.
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