Every month, Tony Conforti pays his family’s water bill on time and in full.
So, when he came home from work Wednesday and discovered he had no water, he was left wondering why.
The problem
“I contacted the water company and was told they had left a notice on our door a week or so ago requesting to look inside our house at the water meter,” he said.
Kansas City Water Services told 41 Action News crews left a 5-day notice in the slip of Conforti’s front door on April 28, warning him to call and schedule an appointment to check his meter or his water could be turned off. The water company said the meter first signaled it was not working properly in December.
The problem, Conforti said, was that neither he nor his wife saw the notice. They never received a phone call. And they never received a warning on their bill.
Their water was shut off May 18.
"I could see if I was behind on our bill or something to that effect, but to turn the water off out of the blue,” Conforti said. “There has to be a better system than that.”
As 41 Action News spoke to Conforti in his home on Thursday, crews arrived to turn his water on. They also checked the meter inside and replaced the box on the outside of the home.
Protocol
According to Brooke Givens, a Kansas City Water Services spokeswoman, it is protocol for the company to leave five-day notices on customer’s front doors.
Givens told 41 Action News over the phone the company is working to add “stronger information” to the top of monthly bills, notifying customers if they need to call the water company or have their meters checked.
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Ariel Rothfield can be reached at Ariel.Rothfield@KSHB.com.
