SOME OVERBILLED FOR UTILITIES; CITY BLAMES ERROR ON SOFTWARE GLITCH IN NEW SYSTEM

Some Cape Girardeau utility customers may be in shock this week after erroneously receiving bills for about twice the amount of their normal monthly bill.

The error occurred on utility bills mailed by the city Wednesday. Some customers were billed for last month's estimated water use in addition to this month's use even though they already had paid last month's bill.

These were the first customers who had estimates calculated by a new system. The city had calculated estimates on its old system and loaded them onto the new one.

The mistake was attributed to a software glitch in the city's new utility billing system, which also has created billing delays dating from late last year. At that time city officials expected to be able to catch up with billing by mid-February. The billing still is three weeks behind schedule, and the city now expects to catch up by the end of April.

John Richbourg, the city's finance director, said customers who receive a questionable bill or have other concerns should contact the city at 334-1332. He was unable to estimate how many customers may have been overbilled.

The city also is working on its own to identify the accounts affected by the mistake, he said. Other sites have reported the same overbilling problem with the system, which was sold by Systems Consultants Inc. of St. Louis.

Customers also may have noticed that bills are coming in rapid succession as the city tries to catch up with the delay. The computer software does not allow the city to bill for two months at one time. "The only way to catch up is to issue them more frequently," Richbourg said.

The city realizes that paying the delayed bills may be difficult for some customers, he said. "We have taken a stance that we will try to work with people this is a hardship on," he said.

The delays have related to printing bills, Richbourg said, not to calculating them. "The software would stop in the middle of the billings, and it would take a period of time to figure out. Basically we were dead until we got the problem solved."

Many bills had to be estimated when the computer upgrade was first installed because customer names could not be downloaded into the meter readers' hand-held meters, he said, adding that the majority of those names are downloaded now.

The $20,000 system was installed in part for Y2K compliance and to improve efficiency, Richbourg said. The system eliminates handwritten work orders and reduces other paperwork.

"It doesn't seem while we're going through the conversion that it is more work efficient, but eventually it will be," he said. "We appreciate the patience the public has shown. Hopefully, we will be caught up soon."