Good Question: Why do payments for the Monroe County Water Authority go to Buffalo?

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Why do some Monroe County Water Authority customers have to send their payments to Buffalo?

If you see a Buffalo billing address on your Monroe County Water Authority Bill, it’s not a mistake. One of you wanted to know why payments from Rochester customers aren’t all processed here locally.

Here’s a question from Victoria: “Why do Monroe County residents have to send payments for Monroe County Water Authority to Buffalo?”

If you get bills in the mail from the Monroe County Water Authority, you’ll notice a remittance slip with a Buffalo P.O. Box. I called the water authority and spoke to an assistant manager of customer services, who explained that their bank’s processing center is located in Buffalo.

“That’s really to expedite payments. They have an automated system in Buffalo and this is for M&T bank,” said Christina Bojko, assistant manager of customer services for Monroe County Water Authority.

She says Rochester area banks don’t have the machines needed to process the payments. If you visit the water authority’s website, you’ll notice it says to send payments to Norris Drive in Rochester.

“We do have the other payment address listed for payments to come right to the Rochester office,” Bojko said. “Typically that would mean, if you didn’t have a bill but wanted to send in a payment, that way we can manually look at the payment received that way we can verify that we have it for the right account.”

Customers do have the option of sending any payment to the Rochester office. The main difference is that the Buffalo payment processing center will need the remittance slip that you receive in the mail. The Rochester office will not.

There are a couple of other options for paying your bill. You can set up automatic bill pay, you can pay online using apps like Paypal, Venmo, or Apple pay for a small fee. Or you can drop your payment off in person in the water authority’s drop box, though the lobby is still closed to the public.

If you have a good question, send it to us at goodquestion@whec.com