To move to water meter or not?

sm0114

We are currently being charged £50 a month by Yorkshire Water ('we' being a couple in a 3 bedroom house), so have been advised by friends to go on a meter, as it should bring bills down closer to £20 a month.

This would be fine and no problem, if it weren’t for the fact (I believe?) this is an irreversible change (after a year?). Being a young couple, we will likely be adding more to the family in the coming years, which will then potentially make a water meter more expensive than the flat rate.

What should we do?

Gothicfairy

No one can tell you what to do..That is up to you.

You are right though that most water companies only give you 12 months to make up your mind and after that the metered charge remains. Some offer 24 months but I would not bank on that lasting.
You pay £50 for what 8 or 10 months ? What is your actual bill amount ?

mick_vandick

I wouldn't change. We are a couple in a 2 bed house and it is costing us £36 a month on a meter and this last 6 months bill is in and we owe them £40, meaning that it has really been costing us more like £42 per month. Not bad considering we would have been away for nearly 3 weeks of that too...
Meters are a rip off

Gothicfairy

Meters are not a rip off..you pay for what you use, how on earth can that be anything but fair ?


As has been said so many times : a payment plan is not a bill...what you pay monthly as part of a payment plan means little as it is only an est based on your past consumption.
To be able to measure bills you have to talk about usage and cubic meters not payment plans.

HappyMJ

sm0114 wrote: »

We are currently being charged £50 a month by Yorkshire Water ('we' being a couple in a 3 bedroom house), so have been advised by friends to go on a meter, as it should bring bills down closer to £20 a month.

This would be fine and no problem, if it weren’t for the fact (I believe?) this is an irreversible change (after a year?). Being a young couple, we will likely be adding more to the family in the coming years, which will then potentially make a water meter more expensive than the flat rate.

What should we do?

£20 a month is very optimistic it'll be closer to £30. Assuming you will have 2 kids and therefore use a total of 4 cubic metres a week then your usage would be about 200 cubic metres per year. According to Yorshire Water that would be about £518 per year if you used an average amount (plus £40 for surface water drainage)(£490 according to their figures). Even Yorkshire Water thinks that 2 people should use £335 per year that's closer to £30 a month. http://www.yorkshirewater.com/your-water-services/water-meters/water-meter-calculator.aspx

mick_vandick

Meters are not a rip off..you pay for what you use, how on earth can that be anything but fair ?

Fair and rip off are different things. It's fair to pay for what you use but it is not fair to pay so much for water. We don't waste water and have a butt for the garden but i can't even afford the water to wash my car.
If it's so fair, why am i paying more on a meter than my parents not on a meter who water the garden every other day in summer and use 3 times as much water as me?
Meters are not fair, it's something some of us are stuck with.

Gothicfairy

mick_vandick wrote: »

Fair and rip off are different things. It's fair to pay for what you use but it is not fair to pay so much for water. We don't waste water and have a butt for the garden but i can't even afford the water to wash my car.
If it's so fair, why am i paying more on a meter than my parents not on a meter who water the garden every other day in summer and use 3 times as much water as me?
Meters are not fair, it's something some of us are stuck with.

Meters are the only fair way of billing and once everyone is on a meter it will even out the issues but that is a way off so something we all have to live with for now.
As for the price of water..when you think the average is about £3 per cubic meter ( 1k litres) for clean , safe drinking water and removal of waste it really isn't that bad.
What price would you think fair ? After all buying bottled water would cost much much more and a septic tank still needs emptying so removing yourself from the grid is hardly cheap either.

McKneff

My OH and I are in a 3 bed semi, both in all day, our meter charge for the last 2 years has been £22/20 a month.

I would highly recommend it,

macman

Switch to metered, if it costs more switch back within the 1st 12 months. It's a no-brainer, you can't lose.

Planeteer

I read a general guideline: Less heads than beds, get a meter.

If there are more heads than bedrooms, the old system may be cheaper.

Have to agree with Gothicfairy that being billed by what you consume is the only fair way. Not paying by meters is archaic and opportunistic.

We are 2 in a 3.5 bedroomed house and switched to a meter. Because the meter got installed with delays (Thameswater), we were also entitled to a free period during meter installation delay. We are expecting a significant difference in our water bills.