AUM American Utility Management Water Bill Ripoff Carol Stream , Illinois
I am trying to understand how can a water/sewer/trash bill can go from an average of $35 per month to over $50 per month. ( $50.09 for August and $58.24 for September). Now my water/sewer bill is as much as electricity and gas bill combined.
I understand their billing practices and how they work, with total usage, square footage and everything else. Their billing system makes it even harder to believe these bills, as when you average apartment complex of 600+ apartments, it makes it very hard for a bill to grow by 50%. This would mean that that every single apartment used 50% more water, which is very illogical.
Water is the most constant utility bill throughout the year, and few studies show that inside house water usage varies only within few percent from month to month. People's habits don't change.
I would love to start class action law suite against these thieves. If more people are interested, leave the message here, and we will get organized.
2 Updates & Rebuttals
Annoyed consumer
Marietta,Georgia,
USA
The BBB continues to do nothing about AUM!
#3REBUTTAL Owner of company
Sat, February 09, 2013
I wrote via email to the President of the Chicago BBB and copied to about 40 employees there. Below is the letter. They are better termed the "Better Coverup Bureau" as they won't do anything about a rogue member who rips off consumers. I would still encourage readers to put in a complaint, if you do nothing then AUM simply wins.
------------------------------------------------------------
Feb. 8, 2013
Mr. Steve J.
Bernas - President/CEO
sbernas@chicago.bbb.org,
BBB of Chicago & Northern Illinois
330 North Wabash Avenue, Suite
3120
Chicago, IL 60611
RE: American Utility Management (AUM)
Dear Mr. Bernas:
I am writing to you with copies to other Chicago BBB workers who may be interested in this topic.
I and other consumers are entirely disappointed with your continuing to rate your member company AUM as A+.
I will direct you and other readers to a long standing blog site I set up when I found this 3rd rate utility was simply 'making up' billings for my condo. If you read far enough in this blog you will see that this firm simply invented bills and I found that I was being billed for excess water usage during many months that I was NOT even in residence at my condo.
From my extensive dealings with AUM I found that the only 'honest' people they employee were in their tech services area, they were able to look back 90 days worth of billings to verify that there was no water usage and with this information I did get 2 credits to my bill.
The Internet has many examples of complaints about this shoddy utility billing firm and some are incorporated into my blog site.
I have said for many years that this firm is running a scam and a racket and they are defrauding consumers in apartment buildings and condos all across the country. I note that I have yet to be sued by them for defamation or liable, that alone should tell you something about the firm.
Previously I had written via email to half a dozen of your staff with information about how the City of Panama City Beach (Florida) had complaints from renters at Stone Harbor Apartments, an AUM serviced complex and after looking at how these people were being ripped off the City put through an amendment to their ordnance to prohibit such outrageous billings.
At the very least this information should have been added to your site under 'government actions'. It was not.
If the Chicago BBB will not now take steps to warn consumers about AUM and their fraudulent practices then I will have to contact other branches of the BBB and Chambers of Commerce in Northern Illinois to alert them to how the Chicago BBB is letting down consumers and not accurately reflecting the problems with AUM.
My blog site is found at: http://aumsucks.blogspot.com/ and I
will incorporate two posts in this email FYI.
Annoyed consumer
Marietta,Georgia,
USA
I think a class action would be a good idea
#3Consumer Comment
Sat, October 20, 2012
There are a lot of annoyed people out there, not just on this site but on other sites as well.
I read your post and thought that it would be a good idea to have a message board so I established it and hope that other readers will also post there. I also have added to my own blog site references to the Rip Off Report and urged readers of the blog to post here also.
The message board can be found at http://aumsucks.freeforums.net/