‘We mess up, we fess up’: Richmond officials acknowledge summer of problems with DPU bills
After a series of problems with a summertime overhaul of Richmond’s utility billing system, city officials say they’re planning to extend customer service hours to help more residents struggling to understand their bills.
Mayor Danny Avula’s administration says it has brought in extra staffing to help deal with a summertime spike in calls from residents, an increase they said was a result of the flawed system rollout that happened in late May and early June.
At a news conference Monday afternoon, Avula and his team said they now realize the city could have done a better job communicating what was going on with the Department of Public Utilities systems.
“We mess up, we fess up,” said Chief Administrative Officer Odie Donald II.
In a memo to the mayor and City Council sent Friday evening, Donald said the city would “add one additional service hour at least two days a week to call center operations until the current issue is resolved.” The city is also beefing up staffing levels and planning monthly customer service open houses and “feedback sessions” to hear from residents about how utility bills could be better understood.
“When we miss the mark on something, we are going to own it and we’re going to fix it,” Avula said. “And that’s taken some time here.”
Inquiries to DPU’s call center nearly tripled after the late May rollout, rising from 13,686 in May to 39,744 in June and 39,065 in July, according to city data. In August, the number drifted back down to 22,689.
The top five issues reported to the call center, according to the city, were higher-than-normal bills, missing bills, missing payments, confusion about old account numbers being switched for new ones and utility service not being turned on by “the desired time.”
DPU Director Scott Morris said there have been “a lot of challenges with the implementation,” but stressed that the city’s data remained largely accurate.
“The data in the core system has remained intact the entirety of the transition,” Morris said.
City officials identified four primary things that went wrong during the billing system overhaul, which DPU dubbed “Project Synergy.”
Customers’ account numbers had to be changed due to limitations with the software, which led to confusion despite some attempts by DPU to publicize the change in advance. The city’s payment processing vendor also switched servers just was the new system launched, according to the city, which caused issues with data verification.
Bills were also formatted incorrectly because data wasn’t being pulled properly, officials said, a problem that primarily affected customers using automated payment methods.
Officials said the situation seems to be stabilizing as problems have been found and addressed. Avula characterized it as an example of the “deep and hard work” to change government culture and technology, a process he said “takes time.”
“Obviously, we want to be sensitive to what residents were feeling in the midst of this, but also to remind residents that doing this work well is going to take time,” Avula said.
In the CAO’s memo to city leadership, Donald said the administration has made “great strides in improving utility services” since the 2025 water crisis.
“Acquiring and maintaining the public’s trust, especially after a catastrophic emergency, is not easy,” Donald wrote. “The consistency that our customers expect in exchange for their trust must be delivered in a manner that continuously instills confidence in service, a standard where issues are corrected in both public and private, and consistent responsiveness. I am confident that DPU’s executive leadership, supervisory leaders, and frontline staff are committed to delivering on your vision for a thriving City Hall and Council’s expectations related to best-in-class service delivery.”
Contact Reporter Graham Moomaw at gmoomaw@richmonder.org
