An exclusive 5 On Your Side investigation has found serious failures regarding oversights of Cleveland's Division of Water and it's billing and customer service practices.
An ongoing series of reports since February uncovered customers being billed thousands of dollars for water they never used.
In the most recent case, a 74-year-old woman received a $26,000 water bill in just one quarterly billing period.
Thelma Davis said she was given the runaround by Cleveland customer service representatives since she first notified them that there was clearly a billing error.
Yet, it took three years and the expense of an attorney who sued the water department before her case was successfully settled for all but $1,000.
"It's just the way you're being treated," said Davis, "You pay your bills--and all of a sudden you have this gigantic bill."
Homer Taft owns a vacant officer building where he received a $2,000 water bill.
"The building had been vacant the entire time of that billing cycle," said Taft, "There is no way that much water could possibly have been used."
Michael Caine was another water customer who received an exorbitant bill out of the blue.
"It was five times the amount of water we normally use," said Caine.
But not one of these customers had their complaints resolved, despite repeated calls.
That's what finally prompted Thelma Davis to take the water department to court--and win.
Unlike the Ohio Public Utility Commission that regulated and oversaw Ohio's gas and electric companies, the Cleveland Division of Water does not fall under its regulatory authority.
Instead, Cleveland Division of Water operated with only one outside, independent group charged with oversight of its business practices.
Cleveland City Council's Public Utility Committee met every month and had the opportunity to question both the water commissioner and the director of public utilities.
The committees' chairman, Councilman Terrell Pruitt, declined repeated phone calls and emails for an interview.
So we found him at City Hall where he insisted "customer complaints" were "not a committee hearing issue."
Pruitt also struggled to answer even basic questions concerning consumer complaint oversight.
When asked how many complaints the water department received last year, Pruitt responded, "I have no idea," and insisted that's not something that should be top of mind for the chairman.
"No--not at all," insisted Pruitt.
Instead, Pruitt argued the committee was primarily responsible for the "financial soundness" of the water department.
The Cleveland Division of Water issued a statement that said there had been a "55 percent decline in billing disputes" over the last four years and now "represent less than 4 percent of all calls."
Here is the full statement from Cleveland Division of Water:
In the last five years, Cleveland Water has undergone a systematic upgrade, investing not only to improve our system, but our service as well. In 2012, we began implementing our Clear Reads Automated Meter Reading (AMR) program, which has helped transform the way we do business and significantly enhanced the quality of our customer service. AMR has allowed us to dramatically reduce the percentage of estimated bills from 17% to approximately 4%. Additionally, we have seen a major shift in the amount and types of calls received by our Customer Service Call Center, including a 55% decline in bill dispute calls. Billing disputes are now less than 4% of all calls we receive each year. We are committed to continuing these efforts and ensuring timely and accurate bills for the 1.4 million customers we serve, and we continually meet our target of 99.5% bills sent on-time. We encourage our customers to call us directly with their concerns, and should we issue a bill that is not accurate, we will work with them to determine why and make any necessary adjustments.
Records provided by the water department showed there were 16,037 billing disputes last year compared with 32,159 in 2012.
