Further evidence that there is a conspiracy to drive me crazy…
Alex Renew, the Alexandria wastewater service, just sent me an emergency email beginning with “Your scheduled payment did not go through.” You can see the email above. I was directed to click on a “Pay Now” button. That took me to my invoice, which stated that my balance was “0.” See?
I called AlexRenew and finally reached a manager, who checked my account. She confirmed that I don’t owe anything. She confirmed that my last payment went through.
“So why did I get this alert?” I asked.
“Honestly, sir, I have no idea.” was the answer.
Ethics Alarms 
I hear you, Jack. I’ve tried to pay my electric bill on-line (since we can’t trust the postal service to handle checks in a timely and secure manner). After going through the usual multi-screen process, the final step produces an error screen: “We cannot accept electronic payments on this account.” NOW you tell me? You had my account number five minutes ago! So, I called the electric company, eventually got through to a live assistant, and THEY have no idea why my account won’t accept payment, either. Oh, well. Try again next month.
Lathechuck
Jack,
I’m growing more and more paranoid every day when it comes to messages like this. I’d be worried first off that someone was faking a message from Alex Renew in order to get you to provide sensitive information. If I get a message from any source saying my payment has been declined, or my payment was on hold, or whatever the case may be, I never click any links provided in the e-mail, but instead go directly to the actual website for whatever business it is.
On the other hand, if the quote “balance due” of -$20.00 was actually correct, the system might not be set up for processing negative balances and it errored out on that.
Yes, never click links in emails. ALWAYS go to the website. Best if you use a password vault with the website link saved, so it is just reflexively part of the login process.
The best way to avoid scams is to use three email addresses: The first one is your regular email you use everywhere. The second is financial institutions only. The third email is all for your bills. The second and third should never get out so scammers don’t know them. If you ever get a suspicious email in the second and third, it is time to change the email and update where you use it. That way any email coming in about banking or bills to your first email can be easily ignored, and any email in the other two can be trusted.
“I’m growing more and more paranoid every day when it comes to messages like this.“
I don’t know if I’m paranoid, I’d call it cautious or skeptical of any email I receive. The policy in our house is that we never click on any link in an email. If we receive an email from anyone claiming anything we go to the account or service in question outside the email like we would normally do to login to an account and check for ourselves about the email claim.
Just yesterday we got an email from Spectrum, our cable provider, saying that some TP-Link routers have a security flaw flagged by the FBI. It turns out the email was legitimate but we didn’t click on the link(s) in the email. We checked the Spectrum website, FBI bulletin and TP-Link then took action. Our model wasn’t affected.
It’s simple: Pay them $-20 to bring your account current.
There is a software testing joke that goes:
“A QA Engineer walks into a bar. He orders a beer. He orders 0 beers. He orders 99999999999 beers. He orders a lizard. He orders -1 beers. He orders a ueicbksjdhd. Then a real customer walks in and asks where the bathroom is. The bar bursts into flames, killing everyone.”
Since the email says you can get in touch with them by providing your account number, first name, and last name, I would consider redacting the account number from the screenshots, and perhaps the invoice number too, unless they have some secondary layer of proof-of-ID like a secret code.
Just in case someone with malicious intent sees this and wants to try messing with your account?