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ever-right t1_iy52yxp wrote

You absolutely have to check the actual readouts from the itemized bill. It should be available online. If you just check the toilets and for drips you can easily miss it. I had a toilet that would run only intermittently so if I didn't catch it at the exact right time I would miss it. It used a lot of extra water until I nailed it down but the usage was all spelled out there in my bill.

It'll have previous months' readouts too. And you can even compare it to the same time last year for an even better apples to apples usage.

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CriticalStrawberry t1_iy5hdm0 wrote

Most large apartments like Buzzoto don't give itemized readouts. You don't pay DC Water directly. Buzzoto gets one big bill for the whole building and each resident pays a portion of it through a submetering contractor like conservice (their name is quite fitting based on my interactions with them!). How that bill is divided is up to them.

We lived in a building managed by Kettler for a while. Apparently there was some kind of mixup in estimated billing vs actual readings and the building owed DC Water a large backpay of money. That debt got evenly divided to current residents whether you lived there during the high usage period or not.

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NPRjunkieDC t1_iy5znl2 wrote

This should be illegal. I've been a landlord in DC and owned condos I rented out, or family members lived in rentals . Mostly 20009 + 20007 zip codes.

The OWNER pays for the water. In the condos, we/they never got a water bill. It's part of the building expenses that are part of the condo fee, which again is paid by the OWNER, not the tenant.

If you are not being individually metered, I don't think dividing the bill is even fair /legal.

This is probably happening in recently built buildings where the developers own the property and squeeze every $$ out of their tenants.

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floppydisk1995 t1_iy62po0 wrote

Is it bullshit? Yes. Is it legal? Absolutely. You think these large corporations are brazenly doing something illegal like that?

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NPRjunkieDC t1_iy63075 wrote

I don't see how they can get away with charging for something that is not individually metered

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floppydisk1995 t1_iy63fqy wrote

Yeah it sucks, but I'm sure they hired lawyers to make sure it's legal. Anything for the sake of profits.

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