Letter from Water company query

turkolina

Hello all..

Am on a water meter in my property. Have 6 monthly readings. Last year the first bill said i had to pay £47 per month. Meter was then read in November confirming direct debit was reducing to £39. Both of these letters had all the tables of readings/consumption bla bla bla.

At the end of December i then received a letter from the water company stating that from 1st January they were increasing direct debit to £51 per month. It does not appear that a meter reading was done (if it was does that means since December i used that much water it warranted a rise in £12 a month for the following 6 months - i doubt it.) If the price of water was going up.. Wow thats a flippin hike..

I need to get the old letters out but this one was so basic it didn't even have the company's phone number on it.. All it said was Dear.... From 1st Jan your dd is increasing to ..... Yours faithfully.....

My direct debit has actually changed to the higher amount. I haven't phoned them yet as my mother passed away so went to the back of my mind but I think its very odd. Anyone know what this is about.. I hope its an error...:cool:

Will give them a call tomorrow..

Turks.

Gothicfairy

I have read this several times now and it is still as clear as mud..lol

As I don't know what water company you are with I have to make some guesses..

First one being that when you say you got 2 letters with a chart etc what you actually got was a 6months bill and because of the consumption during that period they were able to decrease your DD.
However as a payment plan is normally set for 11 months it might be that you are due to have it reset and owe them money at this point so it has to increase.

The problem I have though is most companies do not touch the DD until it is due to be reviewed (and some don't then either) unless they are asked by a customer to do so. They do not normally review anything on a 6 monthly basis as it can take a month to set up a new DD depending on the date of the application and the date the customer wants it to be taken out on.
But if you were billed in November then your payment plan was reset in December it is very possible you were in arrears at that point and the plan had to increase to cover that.

What I would think happened is that at some point you got your first water bill and about a month or so later you asked for a payment plan but by that time you had already used your billed amount plus a month or so and now it has caught up, it is called accrued days ..

But then again you did not give all that much detail to go on so I am guessing ..

The questions really are : Do you owe the water company anything right now ?
What was your last bill and did you clear it or have a balance carried forward?
Have you checked the meter reading on the last bill and supplied on now ?