We’re taking action for a senior citizen facing an exorbitant water bill.
The Detroit resident says she had every reason to believe she was paying every penny owed - until she was slapped with thousands of dollars in charges.
It’s pages and pages of back charges this resident says she never expected to see - $6,400.
It’s dollar amount that Detroit resident Delores Jackson says is causing her to lose sleep.
“I’m thinking this is a joke,” she says. “It can’t be real.”
When Jackson went into pay her bill at the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, she says she was handed a backlog of everything she apparently owed for the last seven years.
She was stunned as they asked her to immediately get on a payment plan.
“I would have to pay 10 percent - 600 for 11 months, plus whatever they charge me that month,” she says.
Jackson pays her bill in person every single month - leaving her to question why she’d just be hearing about it now.
So we went looking for more answers from the water department - only to find out that the issue goes back to a faulty meter.
The department wrote in a statement to channel 7 that ”once repaired the meter caught up with water usage since 2010 and that what the customer had been paying was just “service charges.”
The department also says their records show they tried to change out that meter in 2011 but were turned away.
That being said, they tell me they certainly could have done a better job at notifying the resident over the last seven years and they say they will work with her to help resolve the issue.
