Submitted by Opposite_Selection_3 t3_y0qa5s in baltimore
The City has just rolled out an entirely new payment system complete with things like Apple Pay as an option yet I did not see an option for auto recurring payment for my water bill. For a city struggling to collect its water bills I am beyond confused why there is not an auto payment option? How do you go through an RFP process for a totally new payment system and fail to have an auto payment feature as a core requirement.
Yup, I absolutely don't trust the city to just take my money whenever they want for however much they want.
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I've wondered this as well.
Honestly though, while I love that for my other bills, Baltimore has a pretty bad track record.
I constantly hear stories of water bills being insanely high. That alone is not always a big deal, as that can be legit, but when it happens, it would make sense for the city to reach out to confirm, or at least give a heads up. Instead, the city appears to 100% rely on owners to catch any issues with their bill.
On top of that, the city recently got hacked.
It just seems like a bad idea to trust the city with auto-billing, which really should not be the case.
I am not saying as a consumer this is the best option but as a City badly wanting to increase collections this seems like a no brainer.
>as a City badly wanting to increase collections this seems like a no brainer.
Absolutely not. The cost of lawsuits when your software malfunctions and fucks someone over is going to drastically outweigh any possible collections.
Agreed.
Unless my water main breaks and I'm out $2000 due to auto billing, rather than being able to have it corrected first.
Also I don't trust BCIT to contract a developer to make the system not save my PIDs in an open format. I was contracted on the ransomware cleanup project and it was a shitshow
I’ll piggyback on what others are saying: ain’t no way in hell I’ll trust this city with the ability to just pull money out of my account
I would be hesitant to put my water bill on auto pay for a lot of reasons. Ive heard many stories about extremely high water bills due to unknown leaks or for no good reason at all. Couple that with the recent cyber hack and lack of trust that most citizens have in the city government and I don’t think enrollment in auto pay would be worth it.
They could easily give you the option with autopay to stop if there's an increase of over 20% from the previous month, and notify you via email or text to affirm first within 10 days, or it proceeds with autopay, giving you a chance to investigate the issue.
Yeah but I think you’re giving Baltimore city too much credit if you think they would implement something like that and do it effectively.
I pay them with a paper check. I don't trust them with anything else.
Lol! You realize half the low-level employees are crooks too right?! I don't use paper checks for ANYTHING, I'd rather pay a money order or certified check fee. Do people not realize how insanely insecure paper checks are? They've got EVERYTHING a person would need to do wire transfers, pay bills, whatever. It's got not just your account and routing number and name of your bank, but also your name and address, what more would a scammer want?
Unfortunately scammers have all that anyway. I have been apart of more data breaches than I can remember.
Even if we can't have or don't want autopay, wouldn't it be nice if the system recognized you, so that you didn't have to fill in your name, email address (twice), bank routing number, bank account number, etc.?
Yes!
I agree this is a failure. BUT I'm with everyone else. I don't want the city to auto bill me for anything. They have a whole office of people just to look at the incorrect water bills. The billing is so bad they literally had a program to hire customer service reps to look at the incorrect bills.
The press releases last week said this would have auto pay.
Will keep an eye open for it, did not see the option when I paid recently.
This is from an earlier thread
https://www.reddit.com/r/baltimore/comments/y0ln2g/i_pay_my_water_bill_once_every_36_months/irskk3d/
I see a lot of people hesitant to do it but I find it odd it is not even an option. If I was the city I would want to be collecting as much revenue as I could. I would even go so far as what most cell phone plans do and offer around a 5% discount for autopay. It's a big deal to be able to reliability establish cashflow. It just says a lot that the city is not even thinking this way.
It's a fucking nightmare if you have more than one property too.
A monthly email with a summary of my bill and a one-click payment option would be fantastic
This new change rolled out autopay. I just enrolled last night. You have to register for a paymentus account and add your water bill account before enrolling in auto pay. https://ipn.paymentus.com/cp/bcgp?lang=en
Thanks so much for this!
if you pay an erroneous bill you can kiss your 21 grand goodbye.
I don't put anything on auto pay that can increase by 1000% because of a toilet leak.
I have a recurring payment set up through my bank for my average bill amount. Sometimes it's a little over, sometimes a little under, but it works well enough.
How do you do this?
I just set up a recurring payment with the bill pay system of my bank. You just need the billing address and account number from your bill.
... but is the issue the payment method or availability of funds? Usually people who have the money to pay something just pay it however theyre told. I dont think adults should have to be reminded to manually pay bills
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rfg217phs t1_irtdf22 wrote
Given everything going on, I feel like autopay would just be a new exciting way to be out 5000 dollars in one shot