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Water bills can now be paid online

SALEM

Salem water and sewer customers can pay their bill online, go paperless, review their payment history, receive email reminders when their bill is due and email confirmation when their bill is paid –anytime they want from the privacy of their own home or phone 24 hours a day seven days a week.

“Customers were asking for this,” Salem Assistant Utilities Superintendent Matt Hoopes said Tuesday.

The online bill pay service went live Oct. 1, but the city wanted a soft opening to work out any issues that could arise. About 14 people have used the service and in that time, Hoopes said the only problem that came up was when Visa charged him an extra 95 cents in addition to the $1.95 convenience fee when he paid his bill online. That’s now fixed.

The $1.95 convenience fee is charged by the payment service. The city does not receive any of that money.

“We’re still learning the system, but it seems to be a safe and secure option for customers to use to pay,” he said.

Customers can go to the city website at www.cityofsalemohio.org and click on the button that says “view or pay your bill online” located under the calendar of events.

Customers have the option of paying online with one time pay and no registration required or they can register their first time and be able to use the extended features for reviewing invoice and payment history, going paperless by getting their bill emailed to them, schedule automatic payments and pay with previously saved credit card or bank account information.

Customers who do register can receive email reminders when their bill is due and confirmation after their bill is paid. They can also sign up to receive text notifications or pay by text. Late payments can be avoided by enrolling in auto-pay.

The payment service was set up through Invoice Cloud working with the city’s software provider Software Solutions. The service costs the city utilities department $150 per month, but some of the money will be recouped through a reduced cost for postage when people start opting to go paperless.

The city has 6,800 customers for residential, commercial and industrial accounts. Hoopes did note that there is a $100 transaction limit, so if a customer’s bill is more than $100, they will have to break the payment into two payments and there would be two convenience fee charges. He said they could have gone with a $200 transaction limit but the convenience fee would have been much higher and most bills are way under $100.

The system accepts Visa, Mastercard, Discover or E-Check. For E-Check, the customer needs to have the routing number and account number for their checking account ready and record the payment and convenience fee in their checkbook. Before the online option, customers could pay cash, check or money order through the mail or in person or through automated payments. Those remain options for paying the bill.

“Our target right now is to hit 10 percent usage,” Hoopes said.

As more people become comfortable with the online option, he’s hoping that usage rate could rise to 20 percent.

When asked about security, he said Invoice Cloud is Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant. He said all their information is encrypted with the most modern technology available and the most secure technology available. The city’s computer system has firewalls to protect the water customer information.

“Every precaution that we and our vendor can take has been taken,” he said.

He encouraged people to go online and take a look at the system and try it out.

When asked about phone payments, Hoopes said they looked into that but couldn’t do phone payments due to an issue caused by alpha numeric account numbers on the water and sewer bill accounts. There was a problem integrating the information with the software program.

Anyone with questions about the online pay system can call the utilities department at 330-337-8723.

mgreier@salemnews.net

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