In normal months, accounts which are delinquent have their service deactivated in the middle of the month, typically between the 15th and the 19th. This particular February brought some record-setting weather, and has caused many Central Texas residents a great deal of trouble.
Because of all the hardships some of our subscribers may be facing, we made a decision to not deactivate service this month, but we wanted to remind those who had not made their February payment to please do so if they could, and to contact us to arrange a plan if they could not. Simple, right?
Unfortunately, the tool in our billing system we tried to leverage to send out that reminder (again, only to accounts which had an outstanding balance) would have needed a big config change to work correctly. Without that big config change, it would send that message to literally every active customer, which would be a nightmare!
As you may have now guessed, I failed to fix that configuration in advance, and thousands of messages went out, instead of the much smaller number which should have. Statistically speaking, the odds are overwhelming that you were sent the message in error. More specifically, if you did not already receive a reminder on February 8th, then you must not have had an outstanding balance at that time, and you may just delete the email. If you know you made a payment this month, just delete the email.
On the other hand, if you have not yet been able to make your payment for February service, we would ask you to contact us. We understand that some people were unable to work, and you may be experiencing a financial hardship as a result of the storm. We are willing to make arrangements so that your service may remain uninterrupted while we give you time to get caught up. If you’re in that boat, please give us a call.