Watercare<\/a>\u2019s chief financial officer Angela Neeson confirmed the error occurred during a billing system upgrade, which resulted in direct debit and credit card payments being processed before their due date.<\/p>\n\u201cAround 43,835 customer accounts were affected, with payments totalling approximately $6.14 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re deeply sorry for this error and the inconvenience it has caused. We are working with the system provider to restore normal service as quickly as possible. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn the meantime, we have put manual controls in place to ensure no further payments are processed prematurely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neeson said the mistake occurred on Monday, with money being deducted up to 18 days before scheduled payment dates. Affected customers were contacted the same day. <\/p>\n
\u201cCustomers have been offered the option of having the payment reversed as we know an unexpected payment can create financial hardship for some customers. <\/p>\n
\u201cAny requested refunds are being processed immediately so the money is returned the same day or by the next working day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Customers who chose to have the payment reversed would need to manually pay their bill on the due date.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe apologise again to all affected customers for this system error.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Consumer]()
Consumer NZ campaigns manager Jessica Walker says the mistake is ‘disappointing’.<\/p>\n
Consumer NZ campaigns manager Jessica Walker said it was disappointing that a \u201cwidespread error\u201d had led to tens of thousands of customers having money deducted from their accounts unexpectedly. <\/p>\n
\u201cUnder the Consumer Guarantees Act (CGA), businesses have an obligation to provide their services with reasonable care and skill. In this instance, we think Watercare has failed to do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that mistakes happen and are pleased to see that Watercare proactively contacted its impacted customers quickly. We urge any Watercare customers who are caught up in this issue and at risk of hardship to contact Watercare as soon as possible so they can receive a refund immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walker said that given the circumstances, she expected Watercare to show leniency with any customer whose manual payment was delayed. <\/p>\n
\u201cAfter all, this issue is ultimately Watercare\u2019s fault.\u201d<\/p>\n
Consumer NZ also believed customers who incurred additional costs or bank fees as a result of the failure were entitled to claim this back from Watercare under the CGA.<\/p>\n
Contacted by the Herald, Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown said: \u201cThis is the first I heard about this issue, which is disappointing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a system error and I expect better, as would all Aucklanders. However, it\u2019s good to see that Watercare have reacted quickly to correct this mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lane Nichols is Auckland Desk Editor and a senior journalist for the New Zealand Herald with more than 20 years\u2019 experience in the industry.<\/p>\n
Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cPlease be assured that this payment has been successfully applied to your account and will not be deducted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[90209,107033,14882,74,43507,84884,138,6852,308949,11773,19959,71,78,27612,1132,130,11692,111,139,69,312,52330,131,1961,110498,686],"class_list":["post-629933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-90209","tag-6m","tag-accounts","tag-after","tag-apologises","tag-billing","tag-business","tag-customer","tag-deducting","tag-deeply","tag-error","tag-from","tag-in","tag-mass","tag-million","tag-more","tag-nearly","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-says","tag-sorry","tag-than","tag-this","tag-watercare","tag-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}