The Birmingham Water Works ranks near the bottom in customer satisfaction among all public water utilities in the country and the worst in the satisfaction among its peers in the southeast, according to a study released Thursday by J.D. Power and Associates.

Out of a 1,000-point scale that measures customer satisfaction among 33 attributes in six categories -- delivery; price; billing and payment; conservation; communications; and customer service - the Birmingham Water Works received 639 points. That number puts the water works in 31st out of 31 utilities measured by J.D. Power. Only two water utilities in the country that serve at least 400,000 customers scored worse than Birmingham.

Water works spokesman Rick Jackson said the utility anticipated a low score in the J.D. Power rankings due to billing issues that led to some customers being overcharged last year.

"We didn't expect to be ranked high in this particular study because it reflects the time period where we faced many challenges," he told AL.com. "We always work toward getting better. We anticipate our results to go up."

But the water works barely had a better ranking in the 2017 J.D. Power study, when Birmingham ranked 30th out of 31 water companies in the southeast. The water works scored its best ranking in J.D. Power's inaugural study in 2016, when it ranked 23rd out of 29 water utilities in the southeast.

The 2018 study found that 3 in 10 residential water utility customers in the country said they have water quality issues - a figure higher than what is usually reported by the EPA's consumer confidence reports produced by local water authorities.

Among the 30 percent of customers who report issues, the most common complaint is low pressure (12 percent), followed by bad tasting water (11 percent); scaling/hardness (8 percent); discoloration (8 percent); bad smell (6 percent); and high lead/mineral content (4 percent.)