Savannah woman says water bill charges don't add up - WSAV-TV

Savannah woman says water bill charges don’t add up | WSAV-TV

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WSAV) – A Savannah woman is on the hook for hundreds of dollars on her water bill, but she says the charges from a privately owned utility company don’t add up.

An $837 water bill is what homeowner Carolyn Walker was left with after Consolidated Utilities apparently charged her for their mistake and discontinued her services.

“Last October, I got a bill for a miscellaneous charge that was $500. When I inquired about it, they said there was raw sewage at the meter and they couldn’t read it that’s why the charge was there,” Walker said.

She says she immediately called her plumber, and that’s when he made her aware that it was mud in the meter hole, not raw sewage. He said the mud came from the water company digging a hole to fix a leak in a previous year.

“They had to dig that hole maybe 15 years ago when there was a leak on the outside of the meter, and they never filled the hole back up,” Walker said.

Consolidated Utilities charged Walker a flat rate of $500 since they weren’t able to read the meter, but she says she’s added up over four years of water bills from the company and the amount isn’t even close.

“I’ve tried numerous times calling and asking to speak with a manager and she has never called me back and that’s been October of 2022,” Walker said. “And I did speak with the meter manager Kim Abbott and he told me it’s my bill pay it or they are shutting my water off.”

And that they did. Walker has been without water in her secondary home since April of 2023 but she says the bills keep increasing.

“Now it is over $800 even after they turned the water off an additional $80 miscellaneous charge and they have not told me what that miscellaneous charge is,” said Walker.

She says she’s frustrated and she feels like the company is taking advantage of her paying her bills in advance.

“I would just put $200 on the bill and let the money come off when it’s due and then put another $200 on the bill,” she said, “and I think they got used to that and thought ‘Oh, this lady is just going to pay her bill,’ but no, I may do that but if it’s not my bill, I’m not going today it and this is not my bill.”

News 3 has been reaching out to Consolidated Utilities for over a week and no one has gotten back to explain their practices and the adjustments made to Walker’s bill. We will continue to reach out to get answers.