Severn Trent Water sting following divorce

neilsue

A member of my family has recently gone through 18 months of a very difficult divorce. Following a court order, thankfully she was given the family home for her and her 3 children to live in. This has all recently been finalised and so she is going through the process of taking over payment of the bills and this has started with speaking to Severn Trent Water. The water bill was paid by her ex husband along with all other bills for the 24 years they were married and they have been in their present property fo 16 years. Severn Trent have advised that as she is now taking over the bills that this is a new account and rather than paying the balancing monthly payments, she is being billed an extra £ 170.00 up to the end of March simply because it is a new account as the bills will be paid from her bank account rather than her ex husbands. Can anyone explain the rationale/justification for this. It would appear Severn Trent are profiteering out of a situation which is simply a change in bank account for the same property/same users of the utility. There has never been any missed payments on the account, the only change to water usage is that her exhusband moved out 12 months ago thus reducing the amount of water usage. How can they justify this. We have spoken to them and also Ofwat and the consumer council and they all say it is because it is a new account - but "so what" - we could understand an administrative charge for changing bank accounts but how can they justify this type of extra charge?

Gothicfairy

is the property on a meter or is the bill RV ? If it is RV then she has until March to make the full payment so that might explain the higher bill.

STW could not care less who pays the bill or what account it comes out of and there is no extra payment for changing anything over. The CCW and OFWAT will not get involved at this stage anyway so why not write to STW and ask them what is going on but I would lay money on it either being RV that needs paying for or the meter reading is est and not actual.

neilsue

Hi - Thanks for coming back. It is RV and her husband was paying monthly with the annual bill running April to March and paid over 8 equal monthly installments. Her husband has paid all months on time and up to September, leaving 2 installments to meet the annual total - this amouns to approx £ 160.00, yet they have said she has got to pay £ 333.00 to take her up to March despite the annual cost calculated by them and divided equally over 8 payments, leaves only £ 160.00 to pay. We have spoken to 2 separate people at STW and they are adamant that this is accurate and justified because it is a new account and this is backed up by the Ofwat & Consumer council.

Cardew

Firstly as it is RV based charges it doesn't matter how much water is being used.

On RV the annual bill from April to March is £xxx and that is all Severn Trent can and will charge. It doesn't matter if there how many people have the account in their name in that year the total to be collected is £xxx. A new account holder will not pay any more than the old account holder.

It seems that your water bill is around £640 i.e. 8 x £80. The husband had paid 6 x £80(£480) but as he ceases to be responsible for the bill from September, his liability is only for 6 months i.e. approx £320. Therefore he will get a rebate of approx £160 and the wife will be liable for the remaining 6 months - i.e. around £320.

If he waives his right to the £160 rebate - or pays his ex-wife that rebate then all will be well. However if he ceased to be responsible for the account in Sept he is only responsible for approx half of the annual bill.

neilsue

Thank you so much for explaining this so clearly. I guess this is likely to happen with all the utility services and council tax also, but thank you once again.

dontgetcaught

Cardew wrote: »

It seems that your water bill is around £640 i.e. 8 x £80. The husband had paid 6 x £80(£480) but as he ceases to be responsible for the bill from September, his liability is only for 6 months i.e. approx £320. Therefore he will get a rebate of approx £160 and the wife will be liable for the remaining 6 months - i.e. around £320.

If he waives his right to the £160 rebate - or pays his ex-wife that rebate then all will be well. However if he ceased to be responsible for the account in Sept he is only responsible for approx half of the annual bill.

This seems to be the correct analysis of what has happened, the wife owes for at least October to March 50%, STW cannot assume that the rebate will not be claimed, it could be that STW repay it automaticly, they repaid us when we moved to a new area.