Greater Western Water Billing System Update Leads to Over 320 Data Breaches

The billing systems previously used by City West Water and Western Water were replaced following their merger to create Greater Western Water. In March, the new billing system encountered significant issues, leading to nearly 200 customers receiving bills at incorrect addresses, which resulted in breaches of customer privacy. Greater Western Water attributed these problems to the transfer of inaccurate customer data into the new system, known as CustomerPlace.

The legacy systems contained inactive and dummy accounts, outdated customer contact information, and manual workarounds. Additionally, discrepancies in data values, formats, and fields between the old systems and CustomerPlace prompted Greater Sydney Water to implement 81 validation rules to ensure accurate data migration. However, just before the system went live, some of these rules were removed to allow accounts that did not meet the criteria to be loaded in time. This decision led to complications, including the exclusion of customers’ preferred billing methods, resulting in accounts that preferred ‘e-bill or BPAY’ defaulting to postal billing. 

Categories: Billing System Issues, Customer Data Management, Privacy Breaches 

Tags: Billing, Systems, Customers, Addresses, Privacy, Data, Migration, Validation, Issues, Preferences