Attleboro, Mass. threatens blind woman over 1-cent water bill

DanGarion
Go back and read Linda's comment . You aren't as much a perfectionist now are you.

Duh... that's not the point.

Another bone head move by big business/govt.

Chase Penalizes Customers For Saving Money Too Long

http://www.curiousread.com/2007/08/chase-penalizes-customers-for-saving.html

JD

You can only use bulk mail rate when you are sending the exact same mail to all recipients. For example, a mileage promotion from a credit card company to all its customers would qualify. A credit card billing with account information and balance would not qualify.

Ok DanGarion, you genius. Regardless if it was bulk rate, this was $20 in the 2,000 bills they sent. Even at 10 cents it would be $200 to send the bills. The point is the water company is trading $200 from my example, up to $840 if they paid full postage, to get back $20 and that just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It's not audited by humans is a poor excuse. The bigger question is, will this charge be passed on to the water companies users. It should be illegal for them to, especially since it's so darn ridiculous and careless.

Yea, you're right about it being less than 42 cents since it was a bulk mailing. But bulk mailing for first class costs 24 cents. Coming from a postal worker.

Seriously?? Does it matter how it went out? It still cost more then the .01 they are billing and trying to take her home away on. How rediculous!!

Consider administrative cost, paper and other associated expenses and add that to the bulk rate price. You'd be lucky if it is less than .42.

Actually Mary Ann, There are many different ways to send bulk mail & get a dicount. I used to work at a mail sorting facility (not the post office) and we would go pick up mail from businesses in the area, put postage on it, sort it by zip code, bundle it and then we would take it to the post office. They themselves did not have enough for a discount, but all the mail combined qualified us for a discount. Not every piece of mail was the same. My mother works at a non-profit radio station that mails out a monthly newsletter. The bulk mail rate she uses make everything have to be exactly the same. Even if we just wrote "hi" on the front or inside of ONE of them, it would have to be mailed seperately with a stamp.

Even if the rate was below $.42 it was well above the $.01 she owed. either way this is not smart business, to pay that much for a penny return. Since even at bulk rates, the cost of mailing out the notices were above the amount to be paid, why not just include the amount on the next billing when it is nailed, this would have saved the company well above the penny owed. Even if a program handles the transactions, there should be a way to include criteria such as do not send if under X amount, add to next billing, if not I would say the company needs a new program or programer to correct this issue as it is costing the company each month to send out statements for bills less then the amount of postage.

I will gladly chip in a few pennies as well, then maybe this woman could be left in peace for a few years. As if she doesn't have enough to worry about, 1 cent? ONE? SERIOUSLY?

ditto. i was thinking the same thing myself.

I was thinking of that myself. Personally, if I worked there and saw that, I would have just paid it myself. A penny? Really? Since they want to blame it all on the machines, can't they program the computer to only send out the notices when the amount past due is over a certain dollar amount? It can't be anything more than a few key strokes. This is a horrible waste of tax payers money. Everyone in the city should get together and send bags and bags of pennies in that poor woman's name, and keep doing it until they change their system to a more common sense based one!

Don't for get the wages for the ones doing this .

Yea...what Jerks! how stubid is that.