Cut Thames Water bill WITHOUT a meter

Cardew

[QUOTE=olly300;26415811_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._[/QUOTE]


Where do OFWAT make that statement?

stephenhj

Cardew. Do I have any evidence for Ofwat's rationale for its bizarre support of secrecy? Yes indeed, in an email from them:

"If we actively promoted the assessed charge we would be guilty of a disservice to customers who are seeking to pay metered charges as against a (cheaper) alternative unmeasured charge. Whilst that might appeal to customers benefiting from the lower unmeasured charge, the grave risk is that you create another charge that is not related to actual water usage. That means creating another cross-subsidy (rather than unwinding one) between metered and unmetered customers."

Let me improve my road analogy. Here's a long narrow road, most of it straight but with several very sharp blind corners. No problem for drivers who know the road, but very dangerous for those who don't--every year a dozen get killed. So: do you put up warning signs to inform them? If you do, some drivers will slow even more than they need to, so they may slow everybody close behind them, adding a minute to those other drivers' journeys. Or do you put up no signs, and let the dozen get killed?

Ofwat's choice is 'don't bother about the dozen'. Hell, that's not many people, is it?

Cardew

stephenhj wrote: »

Cardew. Do I have any evidence for Ofwat's rationale for its bizarre support of secrecy? Yes indeed, in an email from them:

"If we actively promoted the assessed charge we would be guilty of a disservice to customers who are seeking to pay metered charges as against a (cheaper) alternative unmeasured charge. Whilst that might appeal to customers benefiting from the lower unmeasured charge, the grave risk is that you create another charge that is not related to actual water usage. That means creating another cross-subsidy (rather than unwinding one) between metered and unmetered customers."

That ofwat email doesn't make any sense at all - strange it is not a policy on their website.

The whole purpose of an assessed charge is to fix it at the average of similar metered households. So by definition it should be cost neutral and not providing a subsidy. If it is 'providing a subsidy' then it is set too low.

Given you cannot elect for an assessed charge, but must apply for a meter, customers cannot 'seek' to pay for an alternative unmeasured charge.

Also as the majority of properties, who cannot have a meter fitted, are flats without gardens, you will not get them watering their gardens as happens with many houses on RV charges.

I would certainly use that email as evidence in any case - have you contacted your MP? Tell him/her your water charges are not an allowable expense to be paid from the public purse;)

stephenhj

Not strange at all, I'd say, that Ofwat doesn't proclaim on its web site either its support for secrecy over the "assessed charge" that it itself invented (in the bad old days when it believed that all consumers should be fairly treated...) or its alleged rationale for that secrecy. Would you if consumer protection was officially a major part of your job, and you were in fact deliberately choosing to let some consumers be ripped off blind?

olly300

Cardew wrote: »

That ofwat email doesn't make any sense at all - strange it is not a policy on their website.

The whole purpose of an assessed charge is to fix it at the average of similar metered households. So by definition it should be cost neutral and not providing a subsidy. If it is 'providing a subsidy' then it is set too low.

Given you cannot elect for an assessed charge, but must apply for a meter, customers cannot 'seek' to pay for an alternative unmeasured charge.

Many people who want a water meter already know whether or not they can have a water meter. It's a case of asking neighbours, looking outside neighbours properties and/or having had building work done on your house involving the kitchen or bathroom.

Cardew wrote: »

Also as the majority of properties, who cannot have a meter fitted, are flats without gardens, you will not get them watering their gardens as happens with many houses on RV charges.

That's how the policy was set up in the Thames Region but unfortunately they have discovered that many houses built before 1937 can't have water meters as they would like them fitted due to being on shared mains where your water supply actually runs under your neighbour(s) house before you get it. In addition quite a few ground floor flats in my area have gardens like I do.

This information has been reported on the local news on the TV on more than one channel, and in my local paper.

Therefore they deliberately become difficult when they have to go to assess people as they already know by postcode who can and can't have water meters.

In addition according to the guy who assessed they currently have the policy that:
1. They are discouraged from fitting a meter inside a property,
2. They are discouraged from fitting more than one meter,
this is due to the size of the meters and the difficulty in reading them.
They also have to take photos to prove they have come out even though they already know by postcode if you can have one.

stephenhj

What’s really shocking about Ofwat’s shameful and shameless support for lack of publicity about the ‘assessed charge’ is that the victims, though few compared to the total number of consumers, are not all that few. (Nor the sums they’ve paid in excess bills trivial!--£200-250 a year, for years back, in our case.) London may be the worst example, because it has many high-rated flats. But other cities also have flats, and Thames Water, as a bit of research has shown me, is not the only water company that keeps pretty quiet.

They must all know perfectly well (though the ones I’ve spoken to are curiously reluctant to say it out loud) that almost any flat in a block with a communal hot-water supply cannot have a meter. Indeed the document that Thames Water gives you after its inspectors have solemnly come to prove what both Thames and you already know to be true, includes such a supply, verbatim (and no ifs, no buts, no “almost any”), in its list of “unmeterable reasons”.

Does any water company seriously publicise the assessed charge? Heck, to any private household these are monopoly suppliers. Their secrecy is a scandal. Still, at least they are businesses, that’s what you might expect. What is utterly scandalous is that Ofwat, the so-called regulator, is not just couldn’t-care-less about their secrecy and the resultant rip-offs, but actively connives in it.

Not many of Britain’s regulators are brilliant at their job, but would any other get away with this? Doesn’t anyone regulate Ofwat?

PlutoinCapricorn

I have not complained to OFWAT and CC for W yet, I am still getting some background information.

I found this today:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/consumer_affairs/article6735270.ece


It has taken some time for me to digest the idea that I have joined a constituency of TW customers who have had a very bad deal because of knowing that they cannot have meters. OFWAT should be representing us and our interests, not 'conniving' with TW.

The above article says that this is an oversight by TW: according to discoveries by other posters it is not, it is deliberate.

stephenhj

Thames Water's secrecy is undoubtedly deliberate: in a phone conversation, one of their consumer "service" people told me (without blushing) that it was "policy" to only tell a consumer about the existence of the assessed charge after he/she had applied for a meter and been told that that couldn't be done. Which of course is most unlikely to happen if the victim concerned knows very well that his flat is unmeterable and therefore doesn't ask for it to be metered.

Emails from TW have confirmed this "policy", though in slightly less unabashed terms--I daresay that, being human, even the most loyal TW employee must slightly queasy about admitting openly to a deliberate silence so disadvantageous to a number of their monopolist employer's tied customers.

suelindsay

thames water is one of the worst performers in terms of customer services for water companies (apart from southern water, united utilities and south east water) so i'm not surprised!

stephenhj

If you dislike being kept in the dark by your monopoly water supplier, hit back: 1. Complain to the relevant consumer council for water; 2. Complain to Ofwat--even that "regulator" , totally supine on this issue, must take some notice, one day, of the way it is colluding in a rip-off; 3. tell anyone you know who may be a victim of the rip-off that there IS a way out, the assessed charge which the monopolists and Ofwat are so eager to keep secret.