New Utility Payment Portal Now Live: AutoPay Users Must Re-Register

Posted by CityOfPlano@reddit | plano | View on Reddit | 27 comments

For customers using the One Time Pay option, no registration is required. However, if you’d like to start using or have previously used AutoPay, you must re-register using your 6-digit Account Number in the new payment portal and then re-enroll in AutoPay. Your account number can be found at the top of your water bill. Payment is not required during registration.

To register your account in the new payment portal system and enroll in AutoPay:

Visit Plano.gov/WaterBill, which is best viewed on a desktop.
Select "Make a Payment/Access the Customer Portal", then click "Register Now."
Enter your account number and select "Search Invoices."
Select your most recent invoice and click "Register Selected Invoices."
Enter your email address and create a new password, then select "Complete Registration."
You will be taken to the home screen for your newly registered account, where you can enroll in AutoPay, paperless billing and Pay-by-Text.
Your account will update to show if you are enrolled in AutoPay, paperless billing and/or Pay By Text.

For instructions with images, go to share.plano.gov/UtilityBillRefresh.

For assistance or to locate your account number, use the new live chat feature located in the lower right corner of Plano.gov/WaterBill or contact Customer Utility Services at 972-941-7105 to discuss your account. Agents are available Monday - Friday, 8:30 am to 4 pm.

Due to higher-than-average call volumes, a callback may be offered. After confirming a phone number, your call is placed in the order as received. You will not lose your place in line, and an agent will call you back the same day.

Between April 20 and May 3, customers who enroll in AutoPay or Paperless Billing will be entered into a prize contest:

5 AutoPay customers each week will win $50 account credit
10 paperless billing customers each week will win $25 account credit

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kzone15@reddit

This is just a terrible roll out. Who at the city is getting a kickback from using Invoice Cloud? There are tons of reputable SAAS providers in this space. They are not one of them. Shameful

ButterscotchHour4211@reddit

The City is full of undeserving incompetent people in management- they had hourly water meter read issue for more than 9 months due to vendor software issue and city used tax money to get it fixed in almost a year. And now this website issue. They hire vendors, give them boat load of money for outdated products and keep paying them for yearly update. The City has one of the highest tax revenue in metroplex and still go over budget every year. Incompetence of highest level.

AvsBehindEnemyLines@reddit

Just a reminder, in case you call up to the main office to deal with this: the people who answer the phone and help with your account did not make this decision nor control how well the city chose to inform us about it. Go easy on them, I imagine they're drowning in complaints and anger right now for something they can't control.

likeadungeondragon@reddit

Sure am glad I randomly saw this reddit post... facepalm.

Apollo_gentile@reddit

Why in the world is this not being communicated to customers?! Just hoping people find a random Reddit post lol what a joke this city is

raw2082@reddit

Same. I don’t think this was even on my recent bill.

Sad_Remove_8245@reddit

You're not the only, I'm also happy I happened to get this on my page.

dallasdude@reddit

There have been no emails about this.

There need to be emails. Like, multiple emails.

But watch, I bet the “YOU ARE TWO DAYS LATE YOUR WATER WILL BE DISCONNECTED IN 72 HOURS” emails will come just fine along with giant late fees.

Remarkable-Serve-249@reddit

And a letter in the mail for those that don't check email that often.

yottabit42@reddit

This is BS. I use autopay to automate my life. I rarely check my mail because it's full of trash and almost all useless anyway. How was I supposed to know about this if I hadn't happened upon this Reddit post? Are you planning to waive late fees from all those bills that start going unpaid due to no fault of the customers??

Howard_Cosine@reddit

Um, maybe pay more attention to your bills and check your mail lol. Jfc.

angrybeaver007@reddit

You still get paper bills in the mail? How quaint. Also, apparently there was no mention of this ib the bills, so your "JFC" inducing comment is worthless and makes you look like the chode you are.

I get almost nothing of value in the mail. It's all electronic. Bills are all auto paid. I pay attention to the amounts when they hit, not the bills themselves. None of that would've helped in this case. Just preposterous that the system wasn't migrated. I haven't seen anything in the mail or an email about this either.

I autopay my bills too. I opened my water statement just this week. There was no mention of this change.

Firm-Brother-8195@reddit

This website allows anyone to view my private information!

Agitated_Body5781@reddit

Why was it so hard for the IT people to transfer over the information to your new system / database ?

So now you gonna make 100s of citizens get inconvenienced because of someone’s incompetence ?

Bingo. Incompetence or it’s past retirement for someone.

Visual_Scientist_298@reddit

Correction, it will be thousands of customers.

sran469@reddit

Corporate IT Systems routinely migrate millions of customers across platforms seamlessly many times a year. Yet we have a rich city transitioning to a new payment portal without any migration efforts in the plan. Really incompetent.

I did this "Registration" yesterday and it was clunky as it could be.

Thank you. This isn’t the first time they’ve migrated systems poorly. Do better Plano IT team. Provide all the feedback with lack of security too what are y’all operating in early 2000s let’s get with the times and start spending our tax dollars more wisely.

mamoit@reddit

You're exposing public information via a single data point (account ID alone with no attempt limit). I mis-typed my own account number and accidentally pulled up someone else's info where I could see their historic billing and email info. Very poor execution...

Good point. The account field is mandatory. The last name and service address were not. I entered all three when I set ours up. Guess what happened when I did that? Has an error and it wouldn’t allow for it. Deleted my service address and last name (so just left the account number) and it pulled everything up right away. Now I read this. Scary and unsecure for sure. What could go wrong? Sigh.

unexpected_dan@reddit

This definitely feels like it should fall under the Texas Data Privacy & Security Act to file a complaint against the city.

This seems like a clear failure to protect customer data.

Also with this I could technically just punch in random numbers for accounts and register it to a random email that I now control. This could easily be scripted into a malicious process.

u/CityOfPlano this really should be addressed and adjusted to have much more authentication than just a single point of entry.

This is an insanely large security failure for a government run rollout.

Terrible.

Sec0nd_Mouse@reddit

Were notifications sent out by any other means?

Random here and there social media posts. The city enews. They did not say a thing on the last 2 emailed bills. If you logged in to the old portal apparently it said something….but those of us on autopay have it set up as AUTOPAY so we don’t have to log in. This has been poorly done for sure. Thousands of folks will not have a clue about it for sure.

I type my account number in wrong (which starts with 466###) and got someone else's water bill and their email address and mailing address and payments.

.... if you type in 6 digit numbers you'll eventually get other peoples personal information.