Updated Saturday 2pm with ARMS Ltd reply
An ARMS consumer urged the public to inspect their utility bills after he received a water bill of a whopping €21,450.72... for two months.
Charles Sammut from St Julian's provided a copy of the bill to Times of Malta to prove he was not making up the story.
The bill was charged for utilising total of 91 cubic metres of water in what appears to be a clear mistake.
"Imagine had it been on a direct debit mandate and they deduct that amount from your bank account! I doubt this is an isolated case. It's a disgrace," Mr Sammut wrote.
The reader said he had sent a colourful letter to the billing department to lodge his complaint.
"The public should be advised to check their water and electricity bills thoroughly before they pay and also to monitor the direct debit."
Issue has been resolved - ARMS Ltd
In a reply, ARMS Ltd said that following the customer’s request to update the meter readings of this non-residential account, the system computed the bill assuming that the water meter was re-commenced.
"Normally the billing system flags exaggerated consumption for further verification. The limit assigned to non-residential accounts, as in this case, has a higher threshold depending on the nature of the premises. In this case, when the automated bill was issued, the account was not flagged for further verification due to the limit assigned to such entities."
ARMS Ltd said the customer had already contacted ARMS on August 17 and the issue was resolved.
The Consumers’ Association of Malta has long received complaints about the way utility bills are worked, even claiming that customers were being cheated out of lower tariffs. The complaints were, however, mainly aimed at electricity tariffs.
At least two clients have taken the authorities to court over the way electricity bills are calculated and are insisting that according to law, clients must be refunded if they have overpaid through the course of a year.
The regulator and ARMS continue to insist in their defence that the computation methods have not changed since 2009.
Read: Bring us your electricity bills, Delia tells voters