Online bill pay a hit with WM Utility customers
Online bill pay a hit with WM Utility customers
news@theeveningtimes.com
Free online bill paying has been a hit as a new service for customers of the West Memphis Utilities. Using your debit or credit card through the utilities website has caught on and actually reduced the number of over the phone payments taken during January.
Assistant Utilities Manager Todd Pedersen reported the news and introduced a discussion about whether the company should drop payments by phone. Utility Commissioners opened up a discussion and then moved the idea to the agenda in February taking a month to think over the option and allow for citizen input. Before online bill pay customers paid by credit cards around 1,000 times a month.
“We started the free online payment process in December of 2016,” said Pedersen. “It quickly jumped up.
In January we have done 1,673 credit cards. What was significant was our over-the-phone payments dropped to 800, 33 percent of our card payments were online, 30 percent over the phone, and the rest were walk-ins.”
Currently when a customer calls in a payment the utility representative enters it into a third-party credit card service.
“They give us their card number, expiration date, and security code to enter it on line,” said Pedersen.
Commissioner Jerry Burns threw out the caution flag.
He said that the utility acting as a middle-man, handling bills with a third party, could expose the city utility to accusations if that information was ever misused.
Pedersen acknowledged the potential liability as a reason to move away from phone payments, but said no fumbles had occurred, though staffing has historically been inadequate in handling phone payments.
“We started taking credit cards eight years ago,” said Pedersen. “We never changed staffing to handle phone calls. For example, we were short-staffed yesterday due to sicknesses.
We had just one person taking phone payments, and I can tell you customers aren’t very happy waiting on the phone. We can all appreciate that.”
Commissioner Susan Marshall asked what the cons would be. Pedersen acknowledged
some customers don’t have Internet
access or smart phones, or they may simply be too set in there ways to change payment methods. The plan does not take away opportunities to make walk-in payments, use the overnight drop box, or payment by authorizing electronic check payments.
Those that are making a partial payment or using more than one card to make a payment won’t find that option online, and would have to do business at the office.
“A lot of our phone payments are when people are being cut off for non-payment,” added Pedersen.
“Partial payments, with some on one card and some on another, are reasons we get calls.”
If the commission ultimately favors eliminating phone payments in the future, possibly as soon as next month, Pedersen said customers will receive a notice along with the March bills, with an effective date of May 1.
Newly-elected City Councilman Wayne Croom made his first appearance at the commission meeting as the city council liaison to the board.
By John Rech
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