As you are washing your dishes or refilling glasses this holiday season, spare a thought for the customers of Greater Western Water (GWW) across Melbourne. It has been an unnecessarily stressful year for far too many of them.

You can choose what you give people for Christmas, but households and businesses cannot choose their water retailer. So when City West Water and Western Water were merged in 2021, creating a new authority for people in the CBD, inner north, Footscray, Werribee, Sunbury and Melton, customers had no choice but to trust that billing and information handling would be integrated with a minimum of disruption.

Treasurer Jaclyn Symes has provided Greater Western Water with a letter promising financial support until November next year if needed. The opposition calls it a “de facto bailout”.Credit: Justin McManus

As The Age’s reporting has shown, that trust has been betrayed.

When the merged service launched the $100 million-plus upgrade of its billing system in May 2024, some people found themselves being charged for their entire apartment block’s water usage. Others discovered their bills had been sent to old postal and email addresses, compromising their privacy and potentially their safety.

More than three-quarters of the service’s 600,000 customers received their bills late, while others told us they were sent text messages asking for payment of incorrect amounts. Some bills left the due date unclear.

As the problems of the new system snowballed, with each bill

© The Age