Lincoln's new utility portal begins with incorrect service addresses

Lincoln residents expressed frustration following what they described as limited communication during the city's rollout of a new utility portal. Erin Frye, the city of Lincoln's Economic Development & Communications Specialist, shared this has been a 3.5-year process due to the old system having limited functionality and unable to provide an online portal for customers to check or monitor their account status. "The new system provides much more functionality, removing manual process, increasing staff efficiency and providing more transparency to the customer with a new online customer portal," she explained in an email to the Lincoln News Messenger. The rollout for notifying customers of the system change began in October. According to the City of Lincoln, account holders received an insert with their bills in October and November. The city mailed letters to customers with information about their new customer number and account number that was needed to set up the new portal on Dec. 31. During the rollout of these letters, it was discovered some had incorrect service addresses. The city shared that new letters would be mailed out Friday, Jan. 9, with the hopes of the mail being received by customers by Jan. 12. Ashley LaBar of Lincoln said the new portal caused an inconvenience on residents. "The biggest one being the letters that were sent out with the incorrect service address but sent to the correct mailing address. How does that even happen? she said. "While I'm happy to see that they are mailing new letters out, the city should have corrected this before hundreds of residents in Lincoln expressed frustration about the matter on the city's Facebook post. It shouldn't have happened in the first place, and we should never have been expected to just let this slide under the rug and still pay our city bills without the guarantee that the payment was in fact going to our correct service address." The city has suspended late fees, penalties and the shut-off process for January. When transferring to the new portal, the city had a blackout period for payments from Dec. 19 to Jan. 4. The city shared it is going to process payments that were received during that time, including checks that were mailed to the city and payments received electronically. Frye said all payments will be processed in the next two weeks.