help- yorkshire water won't re-imburse me

carrielouise80

can anyone help advise me on the long story below...

i moved into my current flat in january this year, it only worth around £100,000 i live alone, the water was on rates the monthly instalments amounted to £29.60 or £389.20 pa, i thought it was a bit steep as at my last property was three times the size and their was 2 of us living there for half the price. Anyhow, i have paid every month until July this year when my neighbour told me she had just had a meter installed and was paying £10 per month with 2 of them living there, in September i made enquiries to get a meter installed, the ebgineer finally came out last week and said he was unable to fit due to the location of the meter in my apartment, he said i would be re-assessed and my charges should decrease. He told me that with a meter it is estimated £2 per head per week and he said that is estimated on the high side.

I chased up my expected rebate today, to be told i wasn't going to get a refund, they said that my charges had decreased to just £96.39 pa with the re-assessment, but they claim i still owe them £54 from August/September payments! they said that i am not entitled to a refund as what i had paid before was on the rateable value!!

My arguement is that after the re-assessment if they had discovered i hadn't being paying enough i would have received a bill for the difference, so why shouldn't i receive the difference now its the other way around? afterall i should have being paying a 3rd less to them over the seventh month period. it only around a £100 but i am desperate for cash at the moment and have pretty much banked on getting this.

Can anyone offer any words of wisdom, as i am sure i am entitled to a rebate?

Cardew

I don't follow your logic I am afraid.

You were paying charges based on your rateable value and those charges surely should be paid until it was decided after the engineer came and decided that you were to be placed on assessed charges.

Your new lower charges now start from that date(or when you applied for a meter) So why should you not pay August and September's charges?

It seems that you feel you want the new charges to apply from when you decided to stop payment.

carrielouise80

my logic is that i have obviously been paying too much money to them over the seven month period on the old rateable value. I am still on a rateable value as they couldn't fit a meter to my property, it's just been re-assessed, so therefore i feel i should be re-imbursed the difference from that seventh period.

As i said above if it had been the other way around and i hadn't being paying them enough within that 7 months then they would now be demanding a payment of the difference.

deanos

Dosent work like that im affraid , the new charges wont be backdated like Cardew mentioned they will start from when you applied for a meter or the date the CSR came round to look.

carrielouise80

oh well, it was worth a try.

Thanks to both of you