Not that you have any choice of who provides your ...

Not that you have any choice of who provides your water service, but consumer beware. A word of warning to anyone signing up with Fairfax Water for the first time: they will tell you an amount of money you will owe on a certain date. They WILL NOT send you a paper bill or anything in any kind of writing. But don't you dare forget to pay it - they will shut your water off with no notice to you whatsoever.

With no written letter or email to the email address they have on file, no call to the phone number of the cell phone that is always on my person, I arrived home to find my water not working. I spent hours checking the pipes and searching for any technical reason they may not work - after all, there was no reason to believe it was anything other than a malfunction. I asked two neighbors if their water worked - it did. The second was kind enough to poke around my lawn, finding a scrap of paper in an obscure patch next to the sidewalk, which I hadn't noticed in the darkness of night. That scrap informed me that my water had been shut off due to nonpayment. "Nonpayment of what?" I wondered. "I just moved in; I haven't received any bills!"

As I got home at 10pm, I had to call the emergency line. A very friendly and helpful customer service representative did his best to help me with the issue, but a technician could not come out until 8 AM the next day. "Can you be home tomorrow for the technician?" Of course I couldn't skip work on zero notice, so I now am expected to just hope that the technician doesn't detect any unusual water pressure when he turns it back on, or else I'm out until Monday, when I once again will not be able to skip work on zero notice.

This whole debacle could have been prevented by any communication with the customer. Any communication whatsoever! I fail to understand what about that is difficult, and I'm left without water as a result. Is it my fault for forgetting the verbal communication about the first payment? It sure is. Is shutting the water off without any advance notice a reasonable next step to forgetting to pay a bill that was never submitted in any kind of writing? I don't see how it could be.