Birmingham Water Works Billing practices for Online Payments Birmingham, Alabama

Last month we paid our water bill online as we have been doing for the past year.  We received a confirmation email that the payment had been processed.  A few weeks later we received a letter from the Birmingham Water Works stating that our payment had been returned when in fact it had not even been processed in addition to the bill they were billing us $25.00 returned check fee.  There was no returned check as the payment was made online. 

We check with our bank where they showed no payment processed to the water company.  We then logged into the account again and paid the bill and paid the $25.00 as after speaking to them they had said that an error on our part caused the payment to decline.  This payment was declined as well this had nothing to do with our personal account balance but the fact that the information was not being received correctly by their system.  We now have 2 confirmations and 2 additional charges of $25.00 each. 

We went to the water company to discuss this before we paid it again and they stated that the errors were our fault and we owed the $50.00 in return check fees again online payments with confirmations. I do not understand how they can charge for something their system failed to process correctly. I know how they will get out of their debt it will be by charging clients for fees such as this just because they say it is a customers fault.  I guess they will get their debt taken care of $25.00 at a time.