Cut Thames Water bill WITHOUT a meter

PlutoinCapricorn

I remember seeing a post by someone who had changed to a water meter, and was asking about repayments as he had been overcharged for years. I agreed with responders who said that there had been no overcharging, he could have applied for a meter at any time.

However, with the special tariffs, it is not so black and white I think. Who hasn't heard of water meters? The "self congratulatory literature" that is stuffed in with our annual bills does feature them (but of course we people who can't have one will not read these pages). But the special tariffs are not publicised, and are sometimes concealed. I remember years ago receiving my annual bill, and there was a number to phone for people who had trouble meeting the payments. I phoned it, and was told that all they could offer was the chance to pay in installments - which I had been doing for years! There was actually a social tariff that might have helped.

In 2000, I believe that the Average Household Charge (not the recent Assessed HC) was introduced, it would have saved me a lot too, but I never heard about it.

I still think that TW try to get people onto meters if they think that they will raise more money this way - large houses, gardens that need watering and cars that need washing etc.- and stall people such as me who would pay a lot less. And I just can't understand why the only way to get onto the Assessed HC is to apply for a meter and be rejected. Why can't some people be fast tracked?

Gothicfairy

Assessed charges are not really a "proper" rate of charge. It is a tariff offered to people who have applied for a water meter and could not have one fitted.
No company would put someone onto assessed without first seeing if a meter was possible ( or in the case of a altered property it is used whilst everything else is being set up)
Your options are meter or RV and assessed is only an option if there is no chance of a meter but even if you are on assessed now if a meter could be fitted now (say a change in pipe work or lay out of the building ) then the water company will attempt to fit a meter.

To be fair and honest all customers should have a meter but sometime that is just not possible.
Putting people on meters does not raise more money for the water companies as their amount of allowed profit is fixed by OFWAT.

olly300

After having a few problems with Thames Water and the last one being over getting a water meter assessment appointment, I strongly suggest if Thames Water are giving you the run around email the Consumer Council For Water. http://www.ccwater.org.uk/

In my case I knew I couldn't have a water meter so applied for one. Thames Water took 8 months to even arrange the appointment for a meter assessment, and were charging me for the on the rateable value in the mean time.

As I pay my bill twice yearly I worked out when I applied for a water meter, that by the time I was on the assessed charge my second water bill would be due. Therefore I complained to The Consumer Council For Water by email as a result I was charged the assessed charge for the second 6 months of the year.

stephenhj

SO DOES OFWAT CARE?

"Why hasn't Thames Water told us"--ie, people like me who cannot have a meter--"about its 'assessed household charge'? When I contacted the company, I was told it was company "policy" not to inform a customer of this method of charging until it was "applicable" to their house or flat--ie until after they had asked for a meter and a survey had shown that one couldn't be fitted! Why on earth not?!

Is that fair? Is it honest?"

That's what I wrote in my first post. And I imagined that Ofwat might share my dislike of Thames's deliberate non-publicity for the charge.

How wrong I was! Thames told me that Ofwat in fact approves of this policy. I couldn't believe this: after all, Ofwat invented the 'assessed charge'. So I questioned Ofwat. And, heaven help us, Thames is right. A long email from Ofwat makes it clear-crystal clear that that body actively does NOT WANT publicity for the assessed charge! And that Ofwat does not give a damn that the result is that some victims (a lot of us, I suspect) have for years been paying wildly more under 'rateable value' than they'd have paid under 'assessed charge', if they'd been told it existed and how to get it.

I quote Ofwat: "We support metering, and expect companies to promote [it].... We do not expect a company to actively promote another unmeasured charge which is only available in very limited circumstances". (Ie, "not many victims, so why bother?" Even if that view were acceptable, in London there are in fact lots)

And not merely does Ofwat "not expect" but "We do not support active promotion of another unmeasured charge..."

Oh, why not? Because "metering should be promoted as the fairest way of charging, any unmeasured charge is a poor substitute. The onus has to be to promote metering."

In plain English. "If you cannot have a meter, there are two alternative methods of charging. Given that choice, we don't mind in the least if you have to pay through the nose under one of them, 'rateable value', but we actively don't want you informed about the other one, the 'assessed charge', which could cut your bill to a fair size".

Yet the two methods are both equally "unmeasured".

For myself, I'd indeed love to have a meter, but I've always known that our communal hot water makes that impossible--as Thames and I agree. That being so, I'd find a reasonably fair 'assessed charge' (£230, reflecting what similar households actually use) a very acceptable substitute for a 'rateable-value' one of more than double the size (£485).

But of course its just me (and probably many thousands of others) who has to pay the monstrous 'rateable value' bill. Not Ofwat.

And Ofwat plainly couldn't care less that people like me are paying through the nose. So much for a body one of whose jobs is (as its writing-paper puffs) to protect consumers!

PS to Cardew: I'm glad we agree on the crucial matter of publicity. But I think you misinterpret Ofwat when it says "For every customer who does not pay the charge, all others have to pay slightly more. If the rebate were backdated, then there would need to be a corresponding backdated increase in other bills."

What Ofwat is implying is "...which of course would be wildly impractical.". So in the real world one customer's rebate would NOT mean an increase for others, to make up the company's takings. And in practice...suppose not just one but even 5,000 people decide tomorrow morning that they cannot afford to pay the water bill: can one really think the other several millions of Thames Water's customers will all be asked for a backdated increase? I don't. Sure, come the next Ofwat "determination" this would be taken into account. But till then I think Thames would have to suffer. Poor dears.

Cardew

stephenhj wrote: »

PS to Cardew: I'm glad we agree on the crucial matter of publicity. But I think you misinterpret Ofwat when it says "For every customer who does not pay the charge, all others have to pay slightly more. If the rebate were backdated, then there would need to be a corresponding backdated increase in other bills."


What Ofwat is implying is "...which of course would be wildly impractical.". So in the real world one customer's rebate would NOT mean an increase for others, to make up the company's takings. And in practice...suppose not just one but even 5,000 people decide tomorrow morning that they cannot afford to pay the water bill: can one really think the other several millions of Thames Water's customers will all be asked for a backdated increase? I don't. Sure, come the next Ofwat "determination" this would be taken into account. But till then I think Thames would have to suffer. Poor dears.

As you say, we are in complete agreement that there should be far more publicity. It is even more reprehensible given that it is cost neutral to the companies. - as said above robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I really don't think I have misinterpreted OFWAT - their quote is above for all to see.

You have 'changed the goalposts' when you introduce 'bad debts' into the equation. Even so, by your own admission, any shortfall from that situation - indeed any situation - the water companies will be compensated for any loss. They are in a win/win situation.

You do seem determined to try and prove that the reason Thames have not given publicity to assessed charges is that it is a 'nice little earner', and I don't think you have made a case for that claim.

Unjust it may be, immoral if you like, but not done for profit(IMO)

PlutoinCapricorn

Stephenhj, thank you once again for making me feel that I am not alone. And thank you for getting Ofwat's position for people like us, it has saved me the trouble of explaining everything to them.

I was disgusted by what they said: I am on a very low income, and have always been a very light user of water as I live alone in a tiny flat and have never had a dishwasher or washing machine, so they are being very unfair to people like me in my opinion. I would have saved a small fortune over the decades if I had been charged for what I actually used, or on a realistic assessment.

I had been hoping for an 11th hour miracle, but now see that I have no choice but to apply for a meter. This means that I have missed 2 years on the low tariff.

I can't see any other reason for TW's behaviour than that they get more money from me this way. If they won't lose anything from the special tariffs, why don't they publicise them?

I know that new builds in residential areas are now fitted with meters, but mixed use blocks are very common in London and perhaps other cities. People whose flats are on top of a car park or offices and shops in these blocks are being treated very unfairly I think. Perhaps some are very wealthy and are happy to pay the standard rate, but I certainly am not.

stephenhj

PlutoinCapricorn and others. No, don't give up. If enough people kick Ofwat, even it might have a rethink.

Here we have Ofwat, a body that around 2000-01 invents, and insists that companies must offer, a tariff that would be tolerably fair to small households--and yet hates the idea that they should be told about it, for fear they would take the offer up! That's logical, ain't it?

And to say Ofwat or anyone else is merely applying "policy" is neither here nor there--policy can be daft as a brush or bent as two pins, it doesn't have any virtue just by being policy.

And if Ofwat could be kicked and shoved into seeing the absurdity of its views, who knows it might not just change them but even tell the monopoly water-suppliers not only to publicise the assessed charge in future but to recompense at least some of the massive injustices that their (and Ofwat's) deliberate silence has led to up till now. (Not that I'm holding my breath: couldn't-care-less goes hand in hand with here-we-are-here-we-stay complacency)

Ofwat's rationale for its bizarre support of secrecy is that some people on assessed charges would be getting a subsidy from other consumers, because their real consumption would be higher than the charge implies. This is pitiful clutching at straws. Sure, overall, people do use more of anything when they don't have to pay extra; and no doubt there are households that will take eight baths a day when they know it costs them nothing; though there are others who, even when that is so, still use less water than the average metered household of a similar sort. No unmetered charging system can be strictly fair to everyone, or as between metered and unmetered.

But the fact is: you have to have some kind of unmeasured charge for the unmeterable household. Which is fairer: the assessed-charge system that would indeed subsidise some extravagant households, at the cost of a few pennies extra on all consumers' bills; or rateable-value which means that some of us have been paying hundreds of pounds a year more than we would have if Ofwat and the companies had ensured we were properly informed, rather than doing the exact opposite?

Putting a speed limit on some dangerous road will cost nearly all motorists a minute or so extra on their journey. Would that be a good reason not do it, if we knew that having no limit meant an extra (and proven) dozen deaths a year?

Cardew

stephenhj wrote: »

Ofwat's rationale for its bizarre support of secrecy is that some people on assessed charges would be getting a subsidy from other consumers, because their real consumption would be higher than the charge implies. This is pitiful clutching at straws.

Stephen,

I agree with the thrust of your post.

However surely the above is simply supposition? Or do you have any evidence to support that statement?

PlutoinCapricorn

Stephen, you are right: I really should not accept the situation without first letting OFWAT and the Water Consumer organisation know what I think of the policies. I don't expect that anything will come of it, but it is the right thing to do.

I have read some of the old postings, and realise that these issues are well known and have been raised from time to time. The postings by littleangel of 5/2/2005 and activepensioner of 19/8/2005 are good examples. Apparently it is not only the case that water companies are not obliged to publicise the special tariffs, according to OFWAT they are not PERMITTED to. I also found someone who said that the engineer who came to see if a meter could be fitted said that it was a waste of time because he had already visited other flats in the block and they could not have meters. What inefficiency.

I know that different water companies have different rules and tariffs, and that the names and amounts change over the years. However, on the basis of Thames Water's recent estimate of how much a small, single person houseold would pay if they had a meter, I have been paying a lot more for many years. So I may have been subsiding people with three or more children, as apparently they get a discount. And the latest assessed tariffs are still higher than the meter estimate, so assuming that I eventually do get on, I will still be paying more than I should and I am sure that this applies to many other people.

BT actually invited targetted people to join their Light User tariff, which is subsidised: OFCOM insisted on this. The Council Tax Single Person's Discount is mentioned on the bills. Why is water different? I think that the explanations are feeble, and don't make any sense.

olly300

The Consumer Council for Water had no legal powers. Only OFWAT does. Due to the way the water industry is structured consumers will never be able to go to OFWAT.

In addition up until last year, my rateable value was less than the assessed charge I was on. So OFWAT is talking rubbish about those on the assessed charge subsidising others as in some places in the Thames region rateable values are actually low.

I actually wanted a water meter because I knew I could use less water and therefore pay less than both charges.

However I discovered by talking to another neighbour in a different flat that I couldn't have one due to the fact that the bathroom cold water comes from a shared tank, so as soon as the rateable value was more than the assessed charge I asked for a meter.