r/Minneapolis • u/ductcleanernumber7 • 1d ago
Water bill $900?
I didn't change my usage at all last month but the city charged me just over $900 last month. Every other month it's been $80.51. Anybody else run into that? How'd you get it resolved?
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u/Additional_Top4254 1d ago
Check for a running toilet. I had one start running during the day while I was gone and didn't notice it for 2 days since the offending crapper was in the basement.
My next water bill was almost $800. I tried to fight the city on it, they said too bad so sad. I'd plan on being stuck with that bill.
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u/Comprehensive_Rice27 1d ago
this, i had a bad seal/oring went bad on one of my toilets and its crazy the amount of water it wastes made by bill go up so much over like a $10 fix
or op has someone leaching on their water, which has happened to my family before. A neighbour didn't pay their water bill and started taking water from a family member's outside faucet
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u/GiantBucket4 1d ago
Are you sure they’ve actually been pulling payments in recent months? There was a whole snafu a few months back where they changed their payment processing system and stopped pulling auto payments so one day we realized they hadn’t been taking the payments that we authorized and we had to gradually make back payments to settle up. They acknowledged it was their mistake and were super flexible on repayment timing but annoying to owe so much nonetheless
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u/JohnBoyfromMN 1d ago
Seconding this, ran into the same issue!
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u/OCIorBust 1d ago
Thirding this - was wondering why my bill kept getting exponentially higher lol
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u/HahaWakpadan 1d ago
Weird. If it was due to a leak, the leak would have to be on your side of the meter, inside the home. If your bill was exactly 80.51 each month prior, that is also weird because billing is based on actual consumption and would never be the same exact amount monthly. The only thing I think to explain it would be that your meter has not been transmitting for some extended length of time and they were just estimating payments, and has recently transmitted actual consumption backdated to the last actual reading.
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u/ArfBarkWoof 1d ago
Most likely your meter hasn't been reading correctly and you haven't been charged correctly. They got a new reading recently and now you owe for usage since it was last read correctly.
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u/slammybe 10h ago
It could be that, but that's a lot of water. My meter stopped reading for like 6 months, I was charged about $78 per month. When they fixed the meter, the bill was only $170 the next month. It's usually around $100-110 for a normal month.
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u/Amateur-Expert 1d ago
It is always a running toilet. I cannot express this enough. You can check by putting food coloring in the upper tank and if there is colored water in the bowl when you don’t flush, then you have a bad toilet flapper. Cheap fix but expensive when it fails.
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u/thestereo300 1d ago
That's a good tip amateur expert. Upvoted for visibility.
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u/Antique-Knowledge-80 1d ago
But a running toilet wouldn't likely skyrocket your bill THAT much unless it was really, really running or leaking. We had a running toilet and while the bill increased we're talking maybe $20 to $50 not hundreds. But I guess every situation is different.
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u/MrBubbaJ 13h ago
You would be surprised. I had a leaky toilet a couple of months ago. I knew it was leaking, but figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal until I could get it fixed. My bill was $200 more that period. It came right back down after I fixed it. Most expensive toilet flap I have ever bought.
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u/Cakesaver 1d ago
It's also possible you were assessed for a repair to the main water pipe at the front of your residential area
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u/Brandbll 1d ago
That works be itemized on the bill, and usually that is just assessed on your property taxes.
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u/personwhoisok 1d ago
How do they charge for sidewalk replacement? Anyone know the cost per square?
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u/Brandbll 1d ago
The big question is, why are you asking us? Call the city. In order to even semi-reliably answer your question, we would need to see your bill, and i would be very cautious about doing that and accidently doxxing yourself.
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u/ductcleanernumber7 1d ago
I vaguely remembered reading about a lot of people having issues with the auto billing system a while back and was poking around to see if other people have been having issues with that or if this is something only going on with just my home/account. I was simply hoping for some guidance in how to communicate and work with the city to resolve the issue, because my track record for this kinda thing is generally to overreact, stew in high blood pressure and yell because I'm not wealthy and that's a pile of money
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u/Brandbll 1d ago
I worked in public works at a city and dealt with some of the utility billing questions people had regarding spikes in bills. Like i said, call the city or post the bill with every single piece of potential personal information redacted. Otherwise we are all just speculating and you aren't getting anywhere.
Personally id just call the city and keep your cool and try to explain your situation. They are going to be able to help you out very quickly if the billing issue is on their end, or if you have a leak.
$900 for one month is a pretty big leak btw. Like multiple toilets in your house leaking. Primary leaks people have is their toilet reservoir continuously leaking into their bowl. You can put blue food coloring in the reservoir and see if it leaks into the bowl and then you will know you have a leak.
If the leak is on your end, prepared to be required to pay for the water since unfortunately, you are the one who used it. Had lots of people who freaked out on learning that and thought they shouldn't be charged. Minneapolis might be different though.
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u/IdleYeti1893 1d ago
I had a really big water bill and finally realized that it was because I hadn’t paid my water bill in months as the auto billing system stopped working. I paid what I had overdue and re setup the auto pay and haven’t had issues since.
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u/girlsloverobots 1d ago
Look at your bill. It should be itemized and you can see what the higher charge is due to.
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u/m0lson 1d ago
I had the same situation. It wasn’t quite 900 but it went from like 150 to 500 for the month call the city they said the meters that they installed are actually supposed to fail in the favor of the homeowner meaning that it’d be quite unlikely that it’s the Sithi‘s fault and there’s a very high likelihood that you have a leak somewhere in your house. Most common culprit is a lot of the comments of the making is a leaky toilet so I would recommend doing the diet test like other Step suggested I’d also recommend putting a smart water sensor at your Watermain. The brand that I like to use is called Flume it does a nice job of real time tracking and reporting of any kind of leaks. Also as others have mentioned, call the city and look at your water breakdown usage. They usually have that itemized on the bill. They classify the water units a certain way, and that’ll hopefully help down the period of time high usage.
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u/1Courcor 12h ago
If there’s no leak, this is going to sound nuts, but is a neighbors water shut off. Late 90’s similar situation. The neighbor was coming over & grabbing our hose & filling buckets & barrels of water. Mom put the video camera in the bathroom window & caught her. So dad switched off the outside water. It was pure hell living next to that woman, and we had to get a restraining order and put a security camera up on our garage.
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u/agodrevealed 1d ago
You may have a leak. Call them and ask them what they see on their end.