Southern Water - 4 years of bills with no notice

Lensman_2

Hi All.

When I moved in to this rental property 4 years ago I opened an account with Southern Water along with a direct debit. They took £11 the first month and then didn't take any more. I rang them and asked them why, the explanation was that the landlord was paying.

I left it at that. I am from a time when the landlord would always pay the water rates.

It turns out that the landlord wasn't paying and I got 4 years worth of bills land on my mat the other day. (£1800)

I don't deny that I am responsible for paying the water rates (it is in my agreement) and have obviously tried to pay them previously.

I have now set up a payment plan that covers the monthly rate plus £10 off the arrears, this is all I can afford.

My question is, surely Southern Water should have let me know before 4 years have gone by and therefore should hold some responsibility for the £1800?

What can I do to address this as I feel it is very unfair for me to take full responsibilty for 4 years of back dated bills as I acted in good faith to start with.

Thanks in advance.

Jim

Cardew

With water bills, unlike gas/electricity, the situation is the same as any debt - they have 6 years to bill you.(5 in Scotland) So it is a valid bill it would appear.

There is a misconception that if a company have made a mistake they can't claim - that is simply not the case.

However I would have thought that the company would have made a goodwill gesture and at least reduced the total.

I would contact the Consumer Council for Water and seek their advice - tell them you didn't receive a bill for 4 years.

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If you are not happy with the outcome then you can complain to CCWater. You can contact them on ...... or visit their website for further information.

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Gothicfairy

Good advice so far but please make sure you write to your water company first..You want it to go to CROSS complaints and they have 10 working days from receipt of your letter to reply.
Explain the situation and be polite ( I am sure you would be anyway but some people do go straight into ranting and raving mode )

Lensman_2

Based on the advice from you and CCWater, I have just sent the following email to customer services.

Dear Southern Water.

I wish to register a complaint regarding your conduct when billing my property for water.

[Account details were here]

I recently received a sequence of bills for a total of £1,778.66, dated from 3-3-2007.

I moved in to this rented property on 15-3-2007. My letting agent did not open an account with you for the water (unlike the electric, gas and telephone) so I rang you and set the account up. You took a payment of £10.64 around that time.

No further payments were taken, so I rang you to find out why. I think this would have been around May or June 2007. You said that someone else was paying the bill, I asked if the name of the person was [Aaa] and you said Yes. ([Aaa] is the name of my Landlord).

I left it at that, as the water bill was always paid by the Landlord in my previous tenancies. I now understand that my tenancy agreement makes me responsible and have already made the first payment on a plan to meet this responsibility.

The receipt of such a large bill a couple of weeks ago was a shock. I have had no communication from you, either addressed to me or to “The Occupier” since that discussion in 2007.

I therefore consider that you have done me a disservice in allowing the arrears to build for such a long time without seeming to take remedial action.

I ask you to take the following actions:

• Please consider, as a goodwill gesture, writing off all of the arrears to date - which I consider that you have a significant responsibility for.
• If you do not agree to writing off all of the arrears, please explain in detail what steps you took to minimise the build up of arrears at this property. I expect you to provide copies of all letters and transcripts of telephone calls made, to date, that apply to the arrears and not just my account.
• Advise me if you have any court judgement(s) made on any other persons regarding this debt.
• Adjust the amount of the arrears based on my continuous single person occupancy since I moved in.
• Remove my responsibility for the cost from 3-3-07 to 15-3-07 as I was not resident here during that time.

Lastly I would like to extend my thanks to one of your Customer Service team. Stuart Tidy was very helpful, knowledgeable and displayed both reliability and integrity throughout our discussions. He is a credit to your organisation.

I look forward to your reply within 10 days.

Regards,

[name]

I will keep you posted.

Gothicfairy

You don't have the right to ask about any other account but your own so you are not going to get the info you have asked for.

You also don't have the right to ask that they change your rate of charge after the fact.

Finally it is not the responsibility of the water company to keep the debt down.

Good luck though, not sure I would have gone about it that way but it will be interesting to see how you get on.

macman

Did you not think to check their claim with your landlord?
Since you had 4 years water FOC,and now have a further 15 years (£1,800 at £120 pa) to pay it off interest free, I find it hard to see on what basis you expect them to write off the debt. Most suppliers in these circumstances would expect the debt to be cleared in the same timescale, i.e. 4 years.

Lensman_2

Update from me on this.

I pretty much got a blank from my complaint above.

However, Southern Water were quite reasonable about payment amounts as I maintained +£10 on my usage to pay against the debt since the bill came in. I went on a meter hoping for a lower bill but it looks like I have a leak - anyway my bill was £15 higher on the meter. I adjusted my repayment to suit.

They offer various charitable schemes for people in hardship. A summary can be found here:
http://www.southernwater.co.uk/at-home/your-bill-and-account/individual-needs/difficulty-paying-your-bill/

I have not taken advantage of the hardship schemes.

I came in to a lump sum to be able to clear the arrears with this week, so I did that today.

macman

But why on earth clear the debt with a lump sum, when they have already offered you years and years of free credit? You could have put that £1800 in the bank earning some interest for yourself.
Paying it off in one hit now is completely at odds with your original complaint.

Lensman_2

macman wrote: »

But why on earth clear the debt with a lump sum, when they have already offered you years and years of free credit? You could have put that £1800 in the bank earning some interest for yourself.
Paying it off in one hit now is completely at odds with your original complaint.

Because I owe 60k and it felt good to be able to punch a hole in that and reduce the amount of accounts I am in debt with.

While that not may be logical it gives me less to be awake at 3:00 am for.

macman

But the interest on that would have helped to pay other debts which are presumably not interest free? Debts which are interest free should be the last ones to be cleared.