Auburn City Water Works Board

"Made an accidental duplicate payment and they wouldn’t return it. Web design of the payment system is incredibly bad. Missed payments don’t properly notify by email and come with a $50 late fee, which is obscenely high for a $30 bill."

"Employees are not knowledgeable of the systems and processes happening on their end. Requested an adjustment in May and was told I would receive it within 6-8 weeks, and today the very rude customer service rep Alana told me that they do not do adjustments during peak season and I would have to wait. Y’all might might want to train your employees."

"I've never had a bad experience with Auburn Water Works. Most of these 1 star reviews come from people who don't know how to pay a bill on time (or don't know how to use a website that functions just fine). Yeah, they'll fine you $5 for paying day late-- one way to avoid that late fee is to pay your bill on time. Who would have thunk it?"

"the online system for bill payment is now a big hassle. the interface is complicated, the text is small and hard to read and the procedures for actually getting to the part where you pay your bill are kind of hidden. instead of "pay my bill" you have to click "citizen self service" or something like that. there are a lot of steps to do a simple thing and moving forward isn't always very clear. something went very wrong for the interface to be this terrible."

"This company provides a good service, but does not hesitate to fine you if you are even one day late on your payment. The fine is $5, unless you continue to be late and then your service is cut off, entailing more fines. $5 is almost 10% of my bill (usually), so it seems like an inappropriately high amount for a required service. I have not been able to figure out how to set up auto-pay on my account online, despite having all my other bills set to auto-pay and looking for the option many times. You also can't set up a payment through the online account with your bank online - it is card only. That makes it very inconvenient for a lot of people that do not have cards (mostly poor people, minorities, people who don't have good credit, etc) or do not want to use cards. In my opinion it seems like the company wants to fine people since it makes it inconvenient in many ways to pay your bill and only allows for 14 - 15 days to make your payment. I can fully understand that companies need to pay for their expenses and empathize with the fact that these services cost money, but it would be much better if there was more time allowed to make the payment or if auto-pay or bill pay setup on the water works website through your bank was possible. With this being the only water service provider in the Auburn area, to me it is very unfair since I have NO choice in the matter. I fail to see how this is not exactly like a monopoly which is supposed to be illegal in this country. I have been fined at least 3 times in the last 6 months alone because I forgot to pay my bill in that short window of time and can't figure out how to set up auto-pay. That is very frustrating and if there was any other option for these services I would change in a h e a r t b e a t !"