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Six dollars may not sound like much money.
It’s a fancy coffee. A pack of new socks. A DART day pass.
But for Ginny Leone, a homeowner in Lakewood who has lived in Dallas for more than three decades, $6 was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Earlier this month, Leone logged on to the new Dallas Water Utilities billing portal, Dallas Go, and was slapped with a 3.15% surcharge that amounted to six bucks.
This was less than optimal, Leone said. Before paying her bill, she’d sat on hold for over an hour waiting to speak with someone from the city’s call center about the fee. Her takeaway from the conversation was that if she paid through a direct bank transfer, the 3.15% charge would be waived.
That didn’t happen, though, so Leone has now vowed to pay her utility bill by mail to avoid paying the fee ever again. Petty? Maybe. But as Leone sees it, “it’s the principle” that matters.
“I get if you’re paying by credit card and have to pay a credit card fee, [the city] has to pass that cost on,” Leone said. “But there’s no reason to charge service charges when you’re doing an automatic bank draft. That’s just adding extra fees to your bill.”
Dallas Go launched on May 18, and its reception hasn’t been warm. Some Dallasites say they haven’t been able to view their total bill before paying. That’s a problem for Victor Aves, a commercial property manager who deals with utilities billing across a handful of North Texas municipalities.
The new billing system ranks as one of the worst, he said, in part because he hasn’t been able to figure out how much he’s being charged before paying. That could become problematic if one of his properties develops a leak, spiking the bill.
He has a Dallas Go account for each of his properties and estimates that by the end of the year he’ll pay close to $1,000 in fees alone. Aves was already frustrated with the city — he isn’t a fan of how conversations about the future of City Hall have gone — and this has reinforced that dissatisfaction.
“The last billing cycle, I want to say I paid roughly $25 [in fees] per commercial account to pay my bills, which I thought was pretty ridiculous,” Aves said. “All these other municipalities have gotten their act together. Whether or not Dallas Water Utilities is listening to the consumers and will do that [remains to be seen], but if they’re doing anything like they’re doing City Hall, probably not.”
Members of the City Council have been equally frustrated by the system’s rollout.
During a council committee briefing on June 15, council member Lori Blair said she has attempted to call the city to set up her own Dallas Go account, only to “get the run around.” Another council member, Laura Cadena, said she’s had constituents get hit with $5,000 or $10,000 bills out of nowhere. (Imagine the fees on those bills?)
Council member Bill Roth called the new portal a “disaster,” and representative Cara Mendelsohn provided perhaps the most classically Dallas summary of them all: “We’ve spent millions of dollars for this system that’s made it harder and more problematic for people,” she said.
City employees acknowledged that the rollout has been confusing for some, but said that as of June 15, 107,000 households had successfully registered for the portal. The city added that for now, late fees aren’t being charged and water isn’t being shut off if bills go unpaid. There have been hiccups in handling an influx of call traffic, but that’s being worked on, too, the city said.
“On average, we typically get about 3,000 calls per day. Since May 18, our team is handling close to 5,000, 6,000 calls a day,” said Daisy Fast, the director of Dallas’ 311 call center, during the committee meeting. “So right now, we are experiencing very large hold times.”
As for the pesky convenience fees. The city gave an extensive statement about Dallas Go to The Dallas Morning News that is best summarized as: shit’s getting expensive. Credit card fee costs are rising, and it’s at the point where that cost has to become everyone’s problem.
“I think they’re just counting on people not really noticing and just getting away with it,” said Leone. “The water bills have gone up, they’ve just gotten higher and higher. It’s not like this is something that is a frivolity, you’ve gotta have water.”
Leone isn’t the only person deadset on mailing in checks from here on out. Another Dallasite, Christopher Tomlin, said he plans to do the same. Like Leone, his 3.15% fee came out to around $6. Like Leone, he won’t be taking that on the chin.
“You really shouldn’t be punishing people for being on time and making things flow much smoother,” Tomlin said. “If they had hidden this fee in there somewhere, that would have been better. For some reason, [just seeing] the extra fee is kind of insulting.”
