Winnipeg Parking Authority wrongfully issued parking notices to some 800
Some 800 people in Winnipeg, Canada were wrongfully sent parking notices by Winnipeg Parking Authority in the spring. As reported by cbc.ca:
A computer glitch resulted in hundreds of Winnipeggers receiving notices of unpaid parking violations — even though they had not been ticketed.
The notices were issued in the spring by the Winnipeg Parking Authority and sent to some 800 people. Colin Stewart, spokesman for the parking authority, said the problem was corrected and nobody was charged.
But nobody was notified, either.
There were really at least two computer-related issues here. This was not a result of software testing like in the Chicago case. Rather it sounds like incorrect information was applied to a numerous customer accounts. Then the staff at WPA had apparently no easy way to undo the change, nor figure out which records were affected. The latter could have allowed them to proactively inform people.
Electing to simply wait for incoming complaints really just puts the burden for WPA’s error on those, whose records were affected by this.
Software testing results in over 100 parking tickets
Tom Feddor, whose Illinois license plate is “0″ has received more than 100 ticket notices from the City of Chicago, as reported by the Chicago Tribune:
A glitch occurred at the Chicago Department of Revenue involving Feddor’s 0 plates being used during tests of ticketing equipment. The error prompted the cascade of ticket notices to land in his mailbox, city officials determined after launching an internal investigation based on calls from the Tribune.
Apparently, the City of Chicago used Feddor’s license plate number to perform tests on their electronic ticket issuing system:
It turned out that some city parking-enforcement aides punched in 0 when testing their electronic ticket-issuing devices, Revenue Department spokesman Ed Walsh said. Officials weren’t aware there was a 0 plate or that Feddor was receiving tickets, Walsh said in response to the Tribune inquiry.
“The test violations should have been dismissed in the database. The majority of the cases [Feddor] contested successfully. But we are taking steps to rectify the situation so in the future an actual registered plate number will not be used to do the testing,” Walsh said.
There seem to be a number of risky technical issues here, such as as performing testing on live customer data, not checking whether the plate is currently in use, and of course actually issuing tickets to the customer.
Found via Near Loop Wire.
Phone billing errors in South Devon
Post Office Telecom Services sent out numerous erroneous phone bills to households in South Devon, England, according to this report:
Mr Postlethwaite of Lee Court, Centry Road, Brixham, had been a BT customer until recently switching to Talk Talk.
He said: “I have always paid my bills and, in fact, when I left BT I had a cheque back from them because I was in credit. I had always paid my bills on time.”
Mr Postlethwaite says he has now been told it was a computer error and thousands of similar incorrect bills have gone out.
From the article it is hard to tell, whether non-customers received bills, too. No action needs to be taken and the bills can be discarded. It looks like the fault (and expense) lies entirely with the phone company and their computer system.
Genesis Energy left some customers without power
Genesis Energy, a New Zealand power company, left some of their pre-pay customers without electricity. Notably, this was a weekend during which it was also snowing and hailing.
Genesis says a pre-paid power account cannot be shut off over the weekend and instead customers just go into debt.
But a computer error has made it impossible for customers nationwide to top up their accounts over the weekend, so at 8am Monday some were cut off without warning.
(From TVNZ)
Cutting off a customer’s power is pretty significant, particularly during cold weather conditions. And on weekends, when customers may not have a chance to recharge their account balance. That is obviously, why company spokespeople seemed convinced that such a thing would not happen.
Utility Billing Mistake in Palo Alto
Mercury News reports that 830 customers were double-charged for their utilities in May:
The mistake came as the utilities department switched to a new billing system that is part of Palo Alto’s broader SAP network, said Tom Auzenne, assistant director of utility costumer support services.
The double-billing was not a computer glitch but a human error, he said. It affected some “bank draft” customers who give the city their bank account numbers so their payments can be withdrawn automatically each month.
Yes, there is definitely human error here. It is worth noting though that similiarly to the recent utility billing case in Texas, customers with automatic bill pay transfers were affected by this.
Errors on May’s eletric bills in Texas
It looks like a computer error caused inaccuracies to occur on some Oncor’s retail providers’ electric bills. Oncor’s service area covers apparently a third of Texas.
About 130,000 customers in the Oncor service area, including 6,000 with TXU Energy, may have received an inaccurate bill last month, utility officials say. Bills could be unusually high or possibly low.
The error is blamed on an Oncor computer glitch that caused incorrect usage and billing numbers to get passed on to some of the 70 or so retail electric providers that get their power through Oncor lines. Oncor, which covers a third of Texas, says it quickly fixed the glitch.
(From star-telegram)
Some companies passed the errors on to their customers, who ended up receiving wrong bills. At that point the situation also turned into a bit of a customer service fiasco:
Officer Kovach said her bill jumped from its usual $230 to $386. She called and complained and was told that she would get a corrected bill in 10-12 days. But it never arrived. She called and asked what she owed but was never told, she said.
Then a second bill came, and it was even higher. She spent another 90 minutes on the phone, she said, and asked for a supervisor. The supervisor said the first bill didn’t get fixed because her original call wasn’t handled by a supervisor.
She remembers asking, “Can you guarantee me that you will not cut me off?”
“Well, Ms. Kovach, I can’t assure you that,” the supervisor said.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she replied. “Your computer messed up. It’s your error, and you can’t assure me that my electricity won’t be cut off?”
It sounds like the staff was not well equipped to deal with this issue and/or was not easily able to take control using their own computer system. This was particularly irritating for those people who had elected to pay their bills via automatic, electronic transfers, as wrong amounts ended up being paid automatically, sometimes more than once.
It would be interesting to get more technical detail that outlines the causes of the problems surfaced.
The lesson for consumers here is to (at least) pay close attention to billing summaries.
