The faulty meters means some customers had been getting zero use bills for months. Photo: Nunnicha Supagrit
A Watercare customer says she had to beg to pay off a huge catch-up bill in instalments after a faulty smart meter gave her zero-use bills for months.
The issue stemmed from Watercare's smart meters, which it told Checkpoint more than 13,000 of were not working.
The water supplier had known about problems with one type of smart meter since October last year, and the fault had so far affected about one third of the 40,000 meters installed since 2022.
Hamideh, from West Auckland's Henderson, told Checkpoint, she had complained to Watercare more than once about an issue with her smart meter which began in November last year, but while waiting for the issue to be fixed she was sent a bill to the amount of $219.
"It was shocking - I was not prepared for it."
She had lost her job a few months ago and knew she wouldn't be able to afford to pay off the bill in one go.
"I called Watercare and asked to pay in instalments and they said no, not possible. I explained I lost my job and was told that I should have saved for it."
After about 25 minutes on the phone, Hamideh said it was accepted she could pay in instalments.
"But there's still no reading on my water meter. I was quite pissed off when she told me I had to save for it.
"They told me the meter just stopped syncing data... they didn't communicate the problem with their customers. It's been seven months and no solution."
Watercare chief financial officer Angela Neeson told Checkpoint she was really sorry to hear about Hamideh's experience and said it needed resolving.
"That it's taken seven months to resolve does sound unusual."
Neeson said when Watercare realised there was an issue with the smart meters processes were put in place to identify when the meters started to become faulty.
"The process does take a couple of months because the first month of a zero read could just be someone on holiday or out of the house but after the second month we move the customer to a manual read," she said.
She acknowledged there was nothing on the Watercare website about the faulty meters and said Watercare had "been focused on liasing with the customers".
"We watch for month two to identify when there is potentially a faulty meter."
Watercare had now stopped installing that particular meter, Neeson confirmed but she did not give a timeline on how long it would take to replace the faulty ones.
"We will always look and how we can do better and we're considering whether we don't wait that one month after a zero read to investigate so that it shortens that period for customers.
"We are always looking at how we can do things better".
Neeson confirmed water bills would increase 7.2 percent at the start of July which she said reflected the cost of running the operations and becoming financially independent.
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