KID warns of unauthorized bill payment service

An online bill payment service contacting Kennewick Irrigation District customers is not affiliated with the district, according to KID.

Doxo Inc. has been using contact information and other district materials to market its services without KID authorization, KID said.

KID said bills can be paid online at www.kid.org with a secure portal at no charge.

Doxo founder Roger Parks says his Seattle-based company is not contacting KID customers.

“We do have a bill payment and account management service, with millions of users paying tens of thousands of billers, that is optimized for use on any device,” he said.

He said he’s sensitive to this issue “because there are actual utility scams out there that do contact customers to demand payment.” 

Parks said KID is just one of more than 40,000 businesses in his company’s directory that his residential and commercial customers access to make payments, particularly on mobile devices.

It is “publicly available information organized in way to make it simple and consistent” for his users, and some of them pay their KID irrigation bill that way.

Some Doxo customers pay a convenience fee and others do not, depending on the user and the biller, he explained.

This story was originally published May 15, 2017 at 5:51 PM with the headline "KID warns of unauthorized bill payment service."