Copperas Cove — The Copperas Cove City Council has requested an audit of Fathom utility accounts, from a billing perspective, after customers complained for over a year. Copperas Cove contracted Fathom to take over water utility billing in 2016. The company had a rocky start with customers, but according to City Councilman James Pierce Jr. that start never seemed to end.
"It was a six month delay getting everything implemented because of coding problems," Pierce said. "Meters started going in and water bills started going up, part of it was because some of the meters were old or inaccurate, but that should be corrected in a couple months, after that everything should be normal. There should be no spikes in water usage.”
Pierce said customers still report seeing water usage spikes they don't understand to this day. After seeing complaints come in regularly, Pierce and Councilman David Morris took action. Pierce told Channel 6 Morris made a motion to audit Fathom utility accounts a few weeks ago and Pierce seconded it.
Interim City Manager Ryan Haverlah gave a report on the audit to City Council Tuesday, September 18. Auditor Weaver & Tidwell will audit 1 percent of Fathom utility accounts. Cove spokesman Kevin Keller told Channel 6 in a release the city will pay the auditor $16,000, which will be covered by the City’s water & sewer fund. Keller stated the audit will examine billing, meter readings, adjustments, corrections, payments made/applied, consistency of Solid Waste to Water accounts.
Pierce told Channel 6 he had heard from several customers that Fathom would turn off their water after bills were already paid or send them bills that were larger than normal out of nowhere. After asking for the audit, however, Pierce told Channel 6 he received a disconnection notice from Fathom himself. Pierce said he had to spend more than 30 minutes on the phone waiting for customer service and eventually wrote them an email before he found out a glitch in Fathom's system was to blame for the notice.
"Fathom did an upgrade in the middle of July. It affected my August bill," Pierce said. "The glitch materialized, delayed my payment for a day. I got charged with a late payment and then a week later got a disconnect notice... It wasn't even my fault."
Pierce told Channel 6 he would not be surprised to find additional errors as a result of the audit. He said he believed there would still be a council vote to fund the audit.
City Spokesman Kevin Keller told Channel 6 the audit would be wrapped up by the end of November.
"We need to get down to the truth and find out if Fathom is at fault, if the customer is at fault, what's going on," Pierce said.
