Manila Water to address customers’ billing woes

Manila Water on Wednesday said the company is willing to address billing concerns raised by consumers covering the months in quarantine.

“We are currently preparing the letter of response to the notice to explain issued by the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System – Regulatory Office on the alleged surge of customer complaints on water bills of their concessionaires,” Manila Water corporate strategic affairs group head Jeric Sevilla.

The water company will craft pro-active measures it plans to offer to the Regulatory Office to remedy the remaining .03 percent of unresolved issues due to after-the-meter leaks.

The company said it has always strived to respond and resolve customer concerns above and beyond regulatory standards and keep customer satisfaction on top of its priorities.

Based on data gathered from June 1 to July 27, 2020, out of 1 million customers, only 7 percent or 73,588 sought clarification on their billing.

Of these, 90 percent were resolved by the call center or by business area frontliners. Only 0.7 percent of customers, or 7,937, have cases that were endorsed for further handling and of these, while 6,246 were verified to have been billed based on actual consumption of customers.

There are 379 cases wherein the spike in billing was caused by undetected underground leak in the customers’ plumbing system while only 57 customers had their bills adjusted.