Did you hear about this?
A 74 year old blind woman was sent a letter by the city of Attleboro, Massachusetts, stating that a lien would be placed on her home if she didn’t pay her overdue water bill.
The worst thing about this? Her overdue bill was only 1 cent … yeah, that’s right. She owed the city one penny so they were about to put a lien on her home if she didn’t pay up!
Geez, I wonder how hard the city of Attleboro is on real criminals!
Isn’t that disgusting?
Eileen Wilbur told the Sun Chronicle of Attleboro that the letter sent her blood pressure soaring.
City Collector Debora Marcoccio says the letter was among 2,000 sent out.
She says a computer automatically prints letters for accounts with an overdue balance, and they are not reviewed by staff before being mailed, she said.
The letter warned of a lien and a $48 penalty if the overdue bill is not paid by Dec. 10.
The charge was from the previous fiscal year, which ran from July 2007 to July 2008.
Wilbur’s daughter, Rose Brederson, who discovered the bill in her mother’s mail, called the situation “ridiculous.”
But she said her mother, who has lived in the home since 1959, would likely end up paying the penny.
I think the city needs to review their billing process! Imagine being threated to have a lien on your home for a 1 cent bill!
What’s really stupid? A one cent bill that costs .42 cents to mail, not including the clerk’s time, printing costs, etc. This is a perfect example of red tape at it’s worst.
I love the way people blame their stupidity problems on the computer.
Well, some human had to program that computer to generate the notices and they had to make that computer recognize a past due balance.
They could have set the past due balance requiring action at something like $5 rather than one penny. But they chose not too and thus made themselves into laughingstocks for their silly notice.
Cheers
Once again a real life example of administrations’ stupidity…