Illinois American Water Company

Summer S.

Seriously so impressed with IMW's customer service, we had the nicest guy named Jaimie come down to fix our water meter. Our landlord has not fixed our basement's leak for about 6 months now and we thought that Jaimie was here to fix the leak. He politely explained that he wasn't there to fix the leak but that he could try to patch it up for us until we got the plumber. Jaimie stayed at the house for extra amount of time patching up our leak with tools from his truck and patiently explained exactly what was going on in the house. It's so nice to see a company with really sincerely concerned and kind employees

John M.

I've been an IL Am Water customer for a little over a year now. Overall the service is fine as long as you don't have to interact with the company. What I mean by that is that after you get everything set up and your automatic billing in order, things work pretty much like clockwork: bill every month, autopay works, no action required. This problem is getting to that point. Setting up my bank draft initially was a problem because customers cannot set it up if you have an outstanding balance on the account. So after getting my bill, I had to send them a check, then wait until the check posted to the account, but not until the next meter-read was processed, so that I could set up the bill pay online while having a zero balance. Couldn't I just pay the bill online then set up the auto draft? Yes, but you are charged a $1.80 fee for paying online, including using an eCheck. So between the stamp for sending a check and the fee for paying online, the only way to avoid a fee to pay is to have auto draft set up. You also cannot pay over the phone. I believe the company does maintain physical locations in the city where you can drop off a check...but frankly I would rather pay the fee than make a special trip. This is 2014 for heaven's sake.

This also recently caused problems when my wife and I switched banks. I went in to change the auto draft information online, but couldn't figure out how to do it. I called ""customer service"" and was told that first they have to manually delete my old account before I can add a new one. I was also informed (again) that I had to have a zero balance in order to set up the new account, so I would have to pay my bill first. That would require either sending a check (price of stamp), paying online ($1.80), or waiting two weeks until the next auto pay from the old account (which would require me setting up a bank to bank transfer because my direct deposits now go to the new bank), and then call back to have ""customer service"" delete the old account, so that I could then log in and add the new account auto pay information. Sound ridiculously complicated? That's because it is. It's honestly a joke. I told them that I was unhappy with the process, and they told me that they ""don't trust their employees with bank information"" so they pay a third party company to process payments and could do nothing about the fee or the process. I told them that if could pick a different water company, I would, but they seemed rather unconcerned (probably because I can't choose another water company). I realize that those of us who use IL Am Water probably don't have any other choice, but I wanted to put my experience out there so you know what to expect.