Epic dispute over $3,500 water bill is a reminder to all Philadelphians: Read the fine print!

In August 2021, Elizabeth Taylor-Mead checked her bank statement and discovered that a few thousand dollars had been withdrawn by the City of Philadelphia.

Her monthly water bill had suddenly jumped from $45 to nearly $3,500.

The Philadelphia Water Department was claiming that her one-bedroom home in South Philadelphia, a rental property that supplemented her Social Security income, had somehow been guzzling enough water to fill an entire swimming pool — every day, for the previous month.

“Approximate gallons used per day: 12,745,” the bill read.

The withdrawal was automatic because Taylor-Mead had enrolled in the city’s zipcheck payment system.

“Suddenly, there’s no money in my account,” she said. “The city had it for a water bill.”

She immediately called her bank to halt the transaction. Her tenants and maintenance worker reported nothing unusual. Is it even possible to use that much water every day?

News stories that summer had detailed how thousands of residents had recently received wildly inflated water bills in error, some as high as $15,000. She figured hers must be a mistake, too. Call customer service. Easy fix.

Wrong.

“This,” she said in February, “has taken years off my life.”

In March, following a 19-month tug-of-war with city officials, the city finally credited her for most of the disputed amount. The administrative review board that ruled in her favor didn’t provide her or the water department with an explanation.

Taylor-Mead, who is retired from the film industry, has since moved out of Philadelphia. She loves the city’s history, diversity and arts scene, and had done some consulting work with an Arab arts and culture nonprofit. She had planned to stay here after retirement.

“To be honest, this has totally soured me on Philly,” she said.

Her billing experience, while an extreme example, is not entirely unique.

As the water department continues with upgrading all 485,000 meters in the city with new transmitters — the official term is Advanced Metering Infrastructure — residents have complained of water shutoffs for failing to comply and excessive bills based on past usage.

Residents such as Kamilah Jackson say they have doubts about the accuracy of the water department’s calculations.

In March 2022, Jackson received a nearly $5,000 water bill, followed by shutoff notices and warnings from the city that a lien would be placed on her home in the city’s Graduate Hospital neighborhood. Her bill is usually under $40.

It turns out that a contractor for the water department had inadvertently read the wrong meter. Her account was eventually credited for the disputed amount.

“It was a yearlong saga. It really did impact my life,” said Jackson, a child psychiatrist. “Nobody believed me. Nobody would listen to me.”

City officials say such mishaps, and high bills triggered by past underbilling, represent a small fraction of the millions of bills issued each year.

Susan Crosby, the city’s deputy revenue commissioner in charge of the Water Revenue Bureau, said the vast majority of meter readings are accurate. She urged residents to cooperate with the meter upgrade process, as the new transmitters track water in near real-time and can immediately flag usage spikes and notify residents by email.

“There’s bound to be some errors,” Crosby acknowledged in April. But, she said, “We have a wonderful billing, inquiry and dispute process. It’s very robust, and it’s there to protect our customers, so that if they feel that they’ve received a bill in error, there’s a process they can go through with many different layers to help them get resolution.”

Taylor-Mead’s $3,429.01 water bill arrived in her mailbox just as thousands of other Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) customers in South Philadelphia and elsewhere were freaking out about the same thing.

Maureen Molinaro, for example, received a $12,000 bill at her Point Breeze home, where she typically pays about $46 a month. A neighbor who usually pays $35 received a bill for nearly $15,000.

“It’s crazy,” Molinaro told The Inquirer in early August 2021.

» READ MORE: A 25,000% increase? Errant water bills shock some Philly residents.

The water department attributed those incorrect bills — which affected about 17,000 residents in 19 zip codes — to an “error with data files.”

“Mine was pretty horrific. It was over $13,000,” Chelsea Burns, of Point Breeze, said recently. But, Burns said, PWD did a good job identifying the problem and fixing it: “They were pretty quick and true to their word.”

Taylor-Mead had a different experience.

Month after month, she’d receive auto-generated letters saying that unidentified city officials had been “unable to resolve your inquiry,” and more time would be required to investigate.

“Thank you for your patience,” they ended. “Sincerely, Customer Service Division.”

“It’s like the Wizard of Oz, with people behind the curtain,” she recalled. “Nobody will give you a name or a direct line.”

Taylor-Mead was eventually told her high bill was not related to the data error. But that figure on the bill about her tenants using more than 12,000 gallons a day? That was wrong. Nonetheless, the city wanted her to pay in full.

“The bill is correct as issued. … Please arrange to satisfy the open balance on the account,” wrote a hearing examiner in June 2022, concluding that the bill was the result of actual water used at some point over a 20-month period when PWD was estimating her water usage. The bills likely reverted to estimates because her meter wasn’t properly transmitting monthly readings.

Taylor-Mead was confused. It’s a tiny, 624-square-foot trinity house. When the meter was working properly, the bills had been around $45, which was in line with all the subsequent estimated bills.

She lived nearby in Pennsport, kept in touch with her tenants, and had a maintenance worker on call. No one was filling pools or watering lawns. No significant leaks were reported or repaired, she said. And after her meter was upgraded in November 2021, the bills went back to normal. She suspects there was a problem with the old meter, or some type of billing glitch.

“I think these bureaucracies rely on the fact that if they just gaslight you long enough, at some point you think, ‘The hell with it.’ and just pay,” Taylor-Mead said. “But they picked on the wrong little old Sicilian lady.”

She pressed on into 2023.

In February, she flew from Boston to Philadelphia for a hearing before the Tax Review Board. There was no board. It was two officials on a screen. She hadn’t been informed the hearing was remote.

“This is so Philadelphia,” she thought.

Kevin O’Brien, the maintenance worker who attended the hearing to testify that the property did not have any major leaks, described it as “the most Kafkaesque experience of my life.”

“She came all the way to Philly to appear in person, but it was by Zoom in a conference room — to somewhere else in Philly,” he said.

The hearing master ruled in Taylor-Mead’s favor and said her account should be credited for about $3,000. He did not provide a rationale.

It sounded as if she had won. But after a month with no word, she reached out to the city’s Office of Administrative Review. A staffer wrote back that the case manager responsible for processing her decision letter “is no longer with the office” and had “left all his work unfinished.”

It would become official within “two billing cycles,” she was told.

The ordeal behind her, Taylor-Mead is in the process of selling the home.

“Definitely a wild ride,” she said.

Department spokesperson Brian Rademaekers said that the department still believes that Taylor-Mead’s bill was accurate — that the water was, in fact, used. A faulty toilet flap or other leak is a common culprit, he said. But Melissa Andre, executive director of the Tax Review Board, said that its hearing officer found Taylor-Mead’s “testimony and evidence credible.”

Regardless, the epic dispute is a reminder that residents are responsible for notifying the water department if their bills are based on estimates, rather than actual readings. Otherwise, they could face big bills in the future, based on what the department says are months of underestimates.

“If people have autopay set up, they could potentially be paying estimated bills for months, then have to catch up on that when it’s corrected,” Rademaekers said. “Take a look at your bill right now. If you are getting an estimated bill we’ll make an appointment with you and upgrade that meter.”

Rademaekers said 93% of accounts are currently billed based on actual readings. The meter upgrades, which began in 2019 and are expected to be completed by May 2025, should further reduce the number of estimated bills.

As for Jackson, who received a bill of nearly $5,000, Rademaekers said a contractor performing a meter upgrade went to the wrong house and Jackson’s meter reading was inadvertently compared with the meter at that address.

“These types of errors are very rare,” Rademaekers said. He said customer surveys have shown that 95% of people are satisfied or very satisfied with the meter upgrades.

David Denenberg, a lawyer who represented Jackson in her appeal, said PWD could do a better job explaining the customer’s responsibility to notify the utility if their meter is not properly transmitting data.

“I’m a lawyer, and I look at it like, ‘Give me a bill and I pay it,’” Denenberg said. “I don’t look to see if it’s actual or estimated.”

Jackson now has an upgraded meter, and her bills are back to normal, about $40 a month. The experience left her frustrated, though, particularly the threats to put a lien on her home. She never received an apology.

“I was almost having a heart attack over here,” she said. “I would like to not have anyone else have to go through this.”

Staff writer Lizzy McLellan Ravitch contributed to this article.