National Water & Power Utility Extortion and Swindle Santa Ana California *EDitor's Comment

In 1995, NWP started in response to the state of California passing laws that allows apartment managers to bill tenants for unit-by-unit water, sewer and trash services. The water market in California showed that water was being wasted in rental properties because the costs were not being passed on to the resident - water, sewer and trash were typically added on to the rent, but the resident had no way of knowing what the actual usage in their unit was. That meant that the property had to pick up the tab for the excess water, trash and sewage usage of all the residents if the added fee to the rent didn't cover the overall usage of the property. NWP is a billing company that bills resident of a property for these services (as well as other services depending on the property), but does not actually supply these services to the property. However, NWP only charges its 'billing fee' while allocating to each resident their portion of the overall usage in the property. The water, sewer and trash charges are based on the allocations that the property sets for its residents which only take effect after the renter's lease has renewed. If any of these are variable in nature, such as trash, it is because the property set the variable rate and NWP is only billing the resident how the property has told NWP to bill the resident. Any discrepancies with this should be brought up with the property.

The Due and Delinquent dates are also set by the property since these dates vary by state. These dates are not arbitrary and, typically, the due date is 20 days after the billing date and the delinquent date is 22 days after the billing date. Since NWP is a nation-wide company, the payment processing center will be located in the state that is the cheapest for NWP to bank in. The payment processing center may change over time as NWP seeks to reduce their costs, but the payment processing center is simply a lock box that the bank that NWP contracts with uses to process the payments for the resident.

Problems with excess late fees and other NWP-borne billing discrepancies have been rectified as of January 2004 since NWP has installed a new, state-of-the-art billing system which allows NWP to better handle all the varying billing requirements that properties have NWP handle for them. The conversion to this new system should be complete by the end of 2004.

While NWP has had billing problems in the past (certainly as far back as 2000) and properties have left NWP to find other billing companies (only to return to NWP because the other companies in the industry are in far worse shape than NWP ever was), most, if not all of those NWP billing discrepancies have been fixed and property managers report a high degree of accuracy and timeliness with NWP billing. Nearly all new aparment buildings being constructed throughout America are being built with water meters installed in the unit so that billing is based on actual usage rather than estimates ensuring even more accurate billing.

In the past residents paid their water usage as part of their rent, it is entirely possible that the property was gouging the resident to cover the excess use by other renters in the property. The resident could not have known whether or not they were being overcharged to cover other renter's usage in the past. But, now, since the resident is being charge for their water, sewer and trash usage, the possibility is removed and the resident is now only charged for what they use.

Additionally, with large properties that contract gas and electric billing with NWP, the property requires the resident to start their utility service when the resident moves in since the property can't do that with such large volumes of residents. But, if a resident fails to call the utility for x number of months, the property is paying for the usage of the resident even though the resident has been living in the unit for that period of time. The property, in the past, has had no way to back charge the resident for these costs. But, now the property can back charge residents that fail to start their utility services on time with NWP.

NWP is not a 'shyster company' as the originator claims. They provide a service to the property which helps the property manage its utility resources and reduce their costs and the property passes these savings on to their residents by charging them for only that water, sewer and trash that they actaully use. As NWP adjusts their billing system to correct any NWP-borne billing flaws, most billing discrepancies that a resident may find are due to the parameters for billing set by the property, not NWP. NWP is a company whose management adheres to a high level of ethics in its practices. Mistakes in this industry are going to happen since the industry is so young (less than 10 years old) and are having to learn best practices as they go, but NWP is committed to customer satisfaction and have made huge strides in improved efficiency, accuracy and timeliness of its billing and customer satisfaction reflects that trend as most, if not all, NWP contracted properties are very happy with the services NWP provides.

Legal action against NWP would most likely not succeed since the property is setting the parameters for resident billing. NWP is billing based on those paramters and only collecting their fee for the service they provide to the property for billing. The burden of accuracy, timeliness, efficiency and reporting is on NWP, but the allocation of services is on the property.

I have one question. Can we file a class action lawsuit against (NW&P) and our Landlord's? Clearly this must be in violation of Landlord Tenant laws in our state (CA).

Our company has worked diligently with all parties involved to resolve all issues of concern.



We believe the matter to have been satisfactorily addressed and now consider the matter to be closed.