Malaga Water Company To Refund Its Customers Over Billing Gaps

More than 59,000 customers successful Malaga will person refunds aft nan city’s municipal h2o institution confirmed it had overcharged users because of a long-running billing error.

Empresa Municipal de Aguas de Malaga (Emasa) has approved nan return of €1,268,266 to 59,315 customers, pinch an mean costs of €21.38 per account. The rumor affects home and business users crossed nan city.

According to nan company, nan problem dates backmost to January 2013 and was linked to nan billing strategy utilized erstwhile metre readings were estimated alternatively than taken directly.

The errors were first recovered during an soul review

In these cases, erstwhile existent readings were later recorded, nan further h2o depletion should person been distributed crossed erstwhile billing periods. Instead, nan strategy charged nan afloat magnitude successful a azygous bill, which pushed immoderate customers into higher tariff bands and led to overpayments.  The discrepancy was detected during an soul review, aft which Emasa launched a elaborate audit to place each affected accounts and cipher nan sums owed.

Around 75 per cent of those affected, chiefly customers who salary by nonstop debit, will person nan money straight into their slope accounts. Other users will person credits connected early bills, while erstwhile customers aliases those pinch closed accounts will beryllium contacted individually to put repayment.

The institution said nan process would statesman erstwhile nan last administrative steps are completed and that refunds are expected to beryllium processed automatically, meaning customers should not request to taxable claims.

The repayments whitethorn not beryllium huge, but will travel astatine a invited clip for galore erstwhile surviving costs are still high

Although nan mean refund is comparatively modest, nan wide standard of nan correction has drawn attraction because it stretches backmost much than a decade to 2013 and involves tens of thousands of accounts.

Consumer organisations person often warned astir nan risks of estimated billing, peculiarly erstwhile adjustments are made months aliases years later.

For galore households, nan repayments will travel arsenic invited alleviation astatine a clip when surviving costs stay high.

Emasa said it is now reviewing procedures to forestall akin problems successful early and to guarantee billing systems correctly bespeak existent h2o usage. Customers seeking further accusation tin interaction nan institution done its accustomed customer work channels erstwhile repayments officially begin.