Late Payment Can Cost You Your Property, AyA Says
Not paying your water bill could end in the loss of your property says the Instituto Costarricense de Acueductos y Alcantarillados (AyA) - the water and sewer company - based on a the Ley General de Aguas, which allows the AyA to encumber properties who are behind in their payments and make no effort to come to some form of repayment deal with the institution.

The law allows the AyA to register a lien against the property which comes before any mortgages registered against the property that can lead to the property being ordered by a court sale for the institution to recover its loss.

At lesat that is the word of Roosevelt Alvarado Ramírez, director of client services at AyA.

Alvarado said that Article 12 of the Ley General de Aguas is specific in giving the AyA the right to encumber a property where a client refuses to pay. Alvarado added that the law does not differentiate between those who are in serious arrears and do not want to pay and with those with say one month in arrears.

The law was passed in 1995 so that the AyA can recover losses due to customers failing to pay their water bill. Until the law was passed, all the AyA could do was suspend service, which many customers would find a way to get connected and continue to avoid payments.

"The lien is legl. We ask that customers pay us or to make some payment arrangement, because in the last instance we will have to resort to a judicial action and that is a serious problem, because we can then encumber the property", said Alvarado.

The AyA has instituted a serious "cut of service" plan to force customers to pay up. Alvarado said that in the 15 days that the AyA has gotten tough on late customers, 22.000 services have been cut.

The service cut is due to a change in the AyA's administrative decision that allowed its customers to pay the bill within 10 days following the due date. Now, the period is only three days.

Alvarado said that customers who have not paid their bill on the fourth day after the due date will be subject to suspension of service, which adds the cost of cutting and reconnection which is about ¢5.200 colones to the monthly bill.

The move, Alvarado says, is due to a recent Autoridad Reguladora de los Servicios Públicos (Aresep) directive that utility companies cannot suspend service for non payment of past bills. The Aresep said that the AyA, for example, can only cut service on the non-payment of the current bill and if the utility does not take action and lets the payment slide, it cannot then suspend service on accumulated bills.

In effect, as long as the customer has service, be it for water, electricity or telephone, and the utility has not suspend for non-payment, it can continue to make payments on the current bill and never have to pay the old bill or bills without a judicial action.

So, in the face of that direction, Alvarado said that the AyA had to change its billing practice and computer software so that past bills don't pile up and it will have to take judicial action, including placing liens on properties, to recover.

Alvarado added that in the short time, customers will understand the situation and pay their bills promptly to avoid being cut of ther service.

The Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) which provides both electrical and telephone services has not announced a decision following on the Aresep directive.