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Residents Warned About Bill Pay Website: 'There's An Easier Way'

By Jeff Todd

THORNTON, Colo. (CBS4) - The City of Thornton is warning utility customers about how they pay their bill online.

"We got alerted to this by some of our customers who thought they had submitted payments and weren't sure if they had posted to their accounts," said Todd Barnes, a city spokesman.

The website in question is Doxo.com.

website
(credit: CBS)

The co-founder told CBS4 the company has 50,000 users in the Denver area and they pay 1,400 companies in the region, some of the largest being Denver Water and Xcel Energy.

Roger Parks said Doxo is a company that allows people to pay all their bills from one simple site. Some accounts are charged but some are not.

The section on Doxo for Thornton utilities has the city's official logo.

"They're not affiliated with us, they do provide a legitimate service but what we need people to know is there's a much easier way to pay your utility bill to the City of Thornton and that's directly through us," Barnes said.

Todd Barnes
Todd Barnes (credit: CBS)

Fine print on the website says Doxo doesn't own the logos it uses. Parks says the company doesn't buy keywords or advertise.

CBS4 searched several other municipalities and while you can pay your bill through Doxo, only Thornton's portal came up on the first page of web results.

It has raised questions if customers know what they're signing up for, but Doxo says there are checks and balances so customers know what they're agreeing to.

"The City of Thornton always wants to make it easy to pay your utility bill with us and we're not going to charge you a fee. And we guarantee it's going to post directly to your account," Barnes said.

Additional Resources

Thornton's official bill pay site is ipn.paymentus.com/cp/trtn

Jeff Todd joined the CBS4 team in 2011 covering the Western Slope in the Mountain Newsroom. Since 2015 he's been working across the Front Range in the Denver Headquarters. Follow him on Twitter @CBS4Jeff.

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