Georgetown water customer receives nearly $2,200 bill
Georgetown woman received over $2K water bill
A Georgetown woman said she received a surprise city water bill for over $2,000 in the mail.
GEORGETOWN, Texas - A Georgetown woman said she received a surprise water bill from the city.
The bill was more than $2,000, and it's been a constant concern for her for months.
What happened?
What She's Saying:
A Georgetown woman said she received a surprise city water bill for $2,181.36 in the mail a few months ago.
Debbie Quinn said she's conservative with her water consumption, and it's not uncommon for her to have a fairly low water bill. When her bill came with four digits, she knew something wasn’t right.
"I was like, 'Ugh, you know, that sounds wrong,' and so I went over to my checking account, and sure enough it was sitting there pending," said Quinn.

Quinn received that water bill in the mail in November 2024. When she called Georgetown Utilities, she said she was in for another shock.
"‘You haven't been paying your bill for 21 months, your water bill for 21 months,’ and I said, 'Okay, well, I've been paying it every month, it's been coming out of my checking account since 2009,'" said Quinn.
What did the city say?
What they're saying:
According to the City of Georgetown, the transmitter on her water meter, which sends readings to the bill, malfunctioned.
"Very distressing that this could ever happen," said Quinn. "Why didn't somebody know for 21 months?"
Georgetown's Chief Financial Officer Leigh Wallace said the city serves about 60,000 water customers, and Quinn is likely not the only one with this problem.
"Yes, this has happened before," said Wallace. "It will happen again. A transmitter will fail. It's our job to look for that and correct it and contact the customer ahead of time."
Quinn was not notified before the bill arrived.
"In this case, we did not contact the customer ahead of time," said Wallace. "That was our error, and we sincerely apologize to Ms. Quinn for that."
The city said it will take another look at how it notifies customers of a faulty transmitter.
"We're reviewing our processes, we are trying to ensure that we always follow the protocols," said Wallace.
Wallace also encourages residents to check their water bill every month, specifically the volume metric rate charge.
"If the bill has zero volume and no charge for volume that could be an indicator that the transmitter on your meter may have a problem," said Wallace.
Below is the full statement FOX 7 Austin received from the city:
"She's right. It is our responsibility to bill people correctly, and work with them ahead of time if something is wrong. We didn't get her adjustment before she was billed, so we didn't have a chance to call her to explain what happened and work on solutions together. While transmitter failures on water meters is not a common occurrence (fewer than 2 percent of our water customers in a given year), we have learned from this situation and have implemented several steps to prevent this from happening in the future.
We have not found a problem with our meters. We test them, and they are measuring usage correctly. These issues happen when the transmitter doesn't communicate what the meter is reading. When that happens, we flag it and send a technician out to investigate. If the customer pays via autodraft, they are removed from autodraft, as an added layer of precaution. The team checks the account daily for the adjustment to come through. We make sure the adjustment is applied to the bill before it goes out, and we make contact with the customer prior to sending them the bill, so we can explain the situation and discuss options, like spreading the payment out over time.
Transmitter failures happen in every water utility. As stated above, the amount of transmitter failures in Georgetown in 2024 amounted to fewer than 2 percent of our water customers.
If customers are concerned about a similar situation happening to them, the best thing they can do is look at their bill each month. If they see a 0 under volumetric water use -- that means we're showing the customer didn't use any water that month (they will still have a base rate, so it's important to look at volumetric usage to see a difference). If that's the case, we should be trying to reach them, so we encourage people to please, pick up when we call or respond to our emails.
Additionally, we always encourage customers to reach out if they notice their bill is exponentially higher or lower than what they're used to spending -- that's usually a good indicator that something is wrong. If your water charges are radically low, it could be a transmitter issue like Ms. Quinn experienced. If it's radically high, you could have a water leak, and you'll want to fix that asap."
What's next:
In the meantime, the city said it had adjusted the bill, so she now owes a few hundred dollars.
"That's money that I have that should go somewhere else," said Quinn. "Give me my money back because this isn't my problem. It's not my problem."
If you happen to have a higher than normal, or even smaller water bill, the city said to call their utility line so that they can find a solution.
The Source: Information from interviews conducted by FOX 7 Austin's Lauren Rangel