Severn Trent: Direct Debit increased to 2200 pounds per month.... !

siviusx

I reported a broken water meter to Severn Trent in April of this year, which they came around and fixed quite promptly. They then informed in writing on how they would recalculate my charges from when I moved in in September 07 and told me that I would be issued a bill in due course.

Meanwhile, I had been paying monthly direct debit charges for 18 pounds from November 07. I figured I would call them about my dd payments after receiving a corrected bill based on my estimated consumption and a few months of actual consumption.

Cue my immense horror today when my bank statement revealed that for October 08, my direct debit from Severn Trent was 2223.24 pounds. ....

I looked up my direct debit plan as sent to me by ST in 2007 and it only runs up to the month of September 08, so I suppose it was time for a reanalysis, and I presume they must have read the readings from the broken meter, concluded I used 2000 pounds of water per month, and increased my DD accordingly.

Leaving aside the issue of mass incompetence that obviously led to this:

-- can they actually increase my direct debit this much/at all without giving me some sort of prior notice or indication? According to the DD guarantee, it states that they should have notified me, but I obviously received no such notification or I would have kicked up a storm earlier.

-- does anyone have any experience with trying to get money back from Severn Trent? As I discovered all of this on a Saturday right around the time their call center closes, I have not yet spoken to anyone at the company, and so I can't actually tell what the real problem here is--the DD increase, or a miscalculated bill based on the old broken water meter consumption charges. Would it make a difference where the error was made in terms of getting me my money back?

-- lastly, as a pre-emptive measure I canceled my DD immediately upon finding out that this had happened as I'm not too optimistic about having it all resolved in one month and I could barely cover this one charge, let alone another one for the month of November. My DD plan says something about cancelling the DD by letter and copying that letter to Severn Trent, but I wrote no such letter as I can cancel things through online banking. Any tips on how to now notify Severn Trent that I will no longer be paying by DD until they resolve all of this and give me back my money, or will the angry phonecall I am making on Monday morning suffice?

Thanks for your input in advance.

WhySoHard_2

OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!
I believe it might be possible to reverse your DD via your bank. When did it actually go out?

siviusx

WhySoHard wrote: »

OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!
I believe it might be possible to reverse your DD via your bank. When did it actually go out?

I realized that about an hour ago and had NatWest cancel the DD and reverse the charge. It's due to go out on the 6th, and according to the NatWest customer service agent, I should be seeing the money returned to my account early morning on the 7th at the latest. An educated guess says that Severn Trent would not have been this fast!

Now, I'm mostly just looking for answers and trying to ensure that everyone everywhere knows that I am never, ever paying ST Water by DD again. I've written a letter that I'll post on Monday saying it's been cancelled, I let their customer service know via e-mail, and to be absolutely sure my point got across, I'll also ring up their call centre on Monday and yell at a person about all of this.