Jerry McCormick

The San Diego Public Utilities Department has looked to wash off the stains from controversies involving high water bills, errant water meter reader employees, repair backlogs, and complaints about a lackluster customer service department.

NBC 7’s Consumer Bob with the Responds team’s investigations that have uncovered mistakes made by the city’s Water Department.

NBC 7 Responds analyzed a 14-month period of customer bills and found nearly three-thousand homeowners saw their bills increase by 100-percent or more. The city says these increases are normal.

NBC 7’s Consumer Bob reports on on what the city has to say about the billing spikes.

A retrofitted ‘smart meter’ with mismatched parts misread a Pacific Beach woman’s water usage by five times as much. NBC 7’s Consumer Bob has what you should look for if your meter is misreporting your water usage.

NBC 7 Responds wanted to investigate whether the city of San Diego accurately tests residents’ water meters. They asked the country’s leading water meter-testing experts to help.

NBC 7 Responds wanted to know if the city’s water meter testing is treating San Diego customers fairly.

After weeks of questioning San Diego’s water department about water meter retrofits, NBC 7 Responds found one home where a botched smart meter replacement led to a customer being billed thousands of dollars more for water she did not use.

At a city council committee hearing, water department officials said they still do not know what is causing the unexplained spikes in water usage but are making changes, including installing a new “state of the art” meter testing system.

The department said it is updating and upgrading its testing procedures in an effort to remediate the billing issues. NBC 7’s Consumer Bob on what it means for customers.

At a meeting Monday in the La Jolla Public Library, 27 residents met to voice their frustration over, what they called “unexplainable” water usage spikes they say they are being forced to pay for.

It’s hard enough for some people to keep up with their water bills but imagine paying someone else’s bill who uses more water. That’s what happened when two men from Normal Heights discovered their bills had been swapped for years.

Water customers are not talking about their water rates, rather homeowners say their water use suddenly skyrocketed in one or more billing periods, leading to hundreds of dollars in higher charges.

NBC 7’s Consumer Bob shares what some San Diego residents are doing after receiving unexpectedly high water bills.

Two San Diego residents discovered their water bills had been swapped for years. They turned to NBC 7 Responds for help after feeling the city wasn’t doing enough to fix the problem.

A pair of San Diego residents noticed they were being overcharged for water by the city. NBC 7’s Consumer Bob and the NBC 7 Responds team looked into the problem and got to the bottom of it.