Shock Letter from Water Authority 21 January 2014 at 4:56PM in Water bills 74 replies 22.7K views

rollon65

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Hello All,[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Some guidance from the well-informed, or the “been there – done it – got the t-shirt” amongst you would be much appreciated please.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]I am currently in dispute with my local water authority, in respect of one of those letters that comes in the morning and spoils your day, your appetite and your sleep.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]It starts “I am writing to you because we have noticed that your current payment amount is not enough to cover the charges on your account.” . . . and continues “A detailed review of your account shows that your latest bill will increase your account balance to £613.47. This means that your monthly payments will need to increase from £17.40 to £124.60 (gulp!) to cover the current charges on your account.”[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]In October of 2012 our area was to be switched from the Rateable Value system to metered charging for water and sewerage and on 18 October 2012 our own water meter was duly installed.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]I had approached my water authority a couple of years previously to ask for a meter to be installed on the grounds that local folk in similar circumstances to ourselves claimed to be paying around just half of what we were paying under the Rateable Value scheme.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]I was told that meter installation involving connection to lead (the metal) supply pipes was not feasible and that I would therefore have to expect to pay for upgrading them, before any such thing could take place.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]On grounds of cost (we are pensioners on fixed pensions of diminishing purchasing power), I backed down from the idea.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]The lead pipes however, appeared not to be a problem when the water authority actually imposed metering upon us![/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]We were offered the option of a trial consumption monitoring period in order to set a monthly direct debit payment plan, or immediate metering of our water consumption.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Keen to make savings as quickly as possible I opted for the latter. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]I was delighted to note that my first monthly direct debit in November 2012 was only £2.00 (yes – two pounds), in comparison with the Rateable Value payment of £47.72 per month.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Of course I was gob-smacked at the reduction, but assumed (yes – I am aware of that old ASSuME chestnut) that the new payment had been back-dated to the start of that particular payment year and thought no more of it.[/FONT]
F[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]rom November 2012 until August 2013, I continued to pay £2.00 per month.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]In September 2013, my direct debit was increased to £17.40 and once again I assumed that with a year of water consumption under my belt that this was to bring things into line with actual recorded consumption.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]I continued to pay at that same rate, until the arrival of said letter two days ago.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Of course, I called the water authority – saying that there must be some kind of mistake. How could my payment of £17.40 suddenly leap to £124.60?[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]The people in the accounts call centre were very sympathetic but insisted that the new figure reflected the amount of water we had actually used. We were even told that our consumption was the equivalent to that which seven people would use.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]We are two OAP's. How could that be right?[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]I ran all the checks suggested on-line: leaks from pipes, dripping cisterns, dripping taps. Everything that I tried just drew a blank.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]I lifted vinyl, carpet and floor traps and none revealed any under-floor leakage.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]I called the authority again and this time the person that I spoke to agreed that the consumption put down to the two of us seemed improbable and that both of the direct debit amounts that I had been paying for the last 15 months looked to be incorrect.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]After referring upwards, the agent was briefed to offer me a “goodwill gesture” of £25.00 discounted from the amount that the say they want from me.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]They said that paying the right amount was “a shared responsibility” and that was all they could offer.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]I responded by indicating that I thought it was a pittance.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]They have arranged for their Water Usage Advisor, or “Green Doctor” to call on me to check things out, but I can't help thinking that there has been an accounting error of some magnitude at their end.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Why charge me just £2.00 per month? Where did that figure come from, if it wasn't for the reason I suspected?[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Why then review it for £17.40, if that still wasn't going to be enough. Wasn't that fact that the figure had been reviewed at all enough to make me feel confident that they knew what they were doing?[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]As OAP's, our monthly pensions leave very little by the way of “disposable income” left over, so it will have to come out of our small amount of savings if we have to pay it all.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Can anyone advise on how we might play this one out, please?[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Many thanks - rollon65.
[/FONT]

macman

Some basics: have you actually verified the billing reads against the actual meter figures? Are they agent reads or estimated?
Does the meter no. match that on the bill?
If all correct above, you may have a leak between the meter and property that is not visible (i.e. in the garden, under a path etc). So do a flow test: turn off everything in the house for an hour and see if the meter moves.

rollon65

Hello macman.

Many thanks for your response. At this point, I haven't had a bill, just this shocking letter. I did ask what meter reading they had on my last call to them, but other than offering me the twenty-five pounds they wanted me to wait until their water usage guy had paid us a visit.
I have already done the check you suggested and the numbers remain the same - both the black ones and the red.
As far as daily consumption goes, yesterdays 14:00hrs reading was 255/8 and todays at the same time was 256/2. I make that a consumption of 0.4cu.m. Multiply that by 365 days in the year and you get a very frugal 146cu.m per annum. No washing m/c activity today though, but all other water utilisation was pretty much as habit.
What do you think of the logic behind a neighbours suggestion - DON'T turn the indoors stopcock off - use no water for an hour - then check the figures? The suggestion was that this might help detect an internal loss of water of some kind, if the alternative check had thrown up nothing.

Regards - rollon65.

Cardew

rollon65 wrote: »

Hello macman.


I have already done the check you suggested and the numbers remain the same - both the black ones and the red.
As far as daily consumption goes, yesterdays 14:00hrs reading was 255/8 and todays at the same time was 256/2. I make that a consumption of 0.4cu.m. Multiply that by 365 days in the year and you get a very frugal 146cu.m per annum. No washing m/c activity today though,


Regards - rollon65.

146 cubic metres per year is not frugal, in fact it is over average for a couple. - and you haven't used your washing machine in that calculation.

The UK average is 55 cubic metres per person per year. So 110 cubic metres for a couple.

You don't say where you live, and water charges vary by a huge amount across the country.

If you lived in the South West, your estimate of 146 cubic metres could cost over £800 a year. In other areas it would be less but £500 a year would not be unusual.

Now as you have only been charged £2 a month(a silly amount) for 10 months from Nov 2012 and £17.40 for 5 months, you will be several hundred pounds in debt.

That will be the reason why the DD has increased to £124 a month in order to get your account back to zero by 31st March when the new charging year starts.

Given they have charged a stupid amount, you should get a much longer period to pay off your arrears - and perhaps a goodwill payment??

samsmoot

You may possibly qualify for assistance from your water company's charitable trust to help clear what you owe. Just write and ask for the forms needed to apply.

rollon65

Hello Cardew/samsmoot,

Many thanks for your most welcome contributions.
Bizarre - we have used the washing machine today and my 14:00hrs check shows 256/6. 0.4cu.m. just like yesterday. How does that work?
We are paying 116.9p per cu.m. for the water supply and 219.8 per cu.m. for waste drainage, plus the small standing charge.
As I mentioned previously [FONT=Arial, sans-serif][After referring upwards, the agent was briefed to offer me a “goodwill gesture” of £25.00 discounted from the amount that the say they want from me.[/FONT]], but against a bill of £613.47, that's almost an insult, in view of the way the debt has been allowed to accumulate.
I have a bill dated 10 September 2013, for the period 24 November 2012 - 23 May 2013 that shows a "Total now due" of £355.98. Underneath that figure is the statement "We have carried out a review of your payment scheme. Based on your current consumption the amounts you have to pay have been amended to £17.40 monthly from 25 Sep 2013.".
There is even a side heading called "Adjustments" . . . and beside it £0.00, so was I to suspect that there was any kind of issue? I tend to think not.
If what they say I owed them at that point was £355.98, even 12 monthly payments of £17.40 monthly would only deal with £208.80 of it - and then there's the small matter of our on-going consumption to take into account, isn't there?
Just worth adding that when I did my secondary meter check (stopcock open, but no water usage) I noted a very small amount of rotation of the silver centre disk that gives the most sensitive indication of water movement.
It was this that worried me yesterday, on the basis that it might just indicate a water leak inside my bungalow - heaven forbid.
However, my neighbour was in his garden and kindly agreed to check his own meter out, on the basis that there was no water being used in his residence either. Lo and behold, the same amount of rotation of the silver centre disk was apparent.
I hope that when the water usage expert turns up tomorrow, we shall get a clean bill of health and establish that there has been a major dereliction of proper accounting practice.
After that, I don't know just how much understanding we shall receive in respect of the outstanding amount and I think we number amongst those many thousands of OAP's who just about manage to pay there own way in this world and are entitled to nothing - no help at all.
Any further observations much appreciated, please.

Regards - rollon65.

Cardew

Hi Rollon65,


Your account is handled by a 'computer' without(normally) any human intervention. It graphically illustrates something that applies to all computers - 'Rubbish in = Rubbish out'

It is obvious that with a £358 debit balance, that the DD should have risen to a much higher amount than £17.40 - that sum won't even cover your usage, let alone start to pay back arrears.


However assuming the meter readings are accurate, you owe the money and it is just a question of how much you can get them to increase their goodwill offer and increase the period of time over which you pay back the arrears.


If you offer to pay back all the arrears in one go, they might increase the goodwill compensation offer.


With regards to a possible internal leak, the usual culprit is a cistern leaking water(silently) back into the toilet bowl. The trouble is it can have a leak but after one flush it can reduce as the mechanism(plunger) has moved slightly.

rollon65

Hello again Cardew,

Really appreciate your sticking with me on this.
I hear what you say about computer billing, but when I last enquired I'm pretty sure I heard my contact say "No - she's got this wrong. It can't be right".
Unless the computer is female, I reckon there is still a human interface inputting details somewhere along the line.
I reiterate the point, that after my (in hindsight) flawed assumption about the reason behind the paltry £2.00 direct debit, to be told that my consumption had been reviewed and I now needed to pay £17.40 would naturally allay any doubts that at that point I was now being presented with the correct figure. They had looked at it - the earlier figure did not represent the amount of our consumption - so here is this new figure revised on that basis.
With regard to the leaking cistern, tomorrow will tell I hope, but to date I have checked for that kind of leakage by holding a piece of absorbent paper against the back of the bowl and to date there as been no sign of any water traveling down it between flushes. I do take your point though that it may be an intermittent thing and I just haven't been testing at the right time.
If it turns out to be that, I will be happy, as the relative cost of putting that right is nothing compared to pulling floor boards up in every room where there is a water supply.

Best regards - rollon65.

macman

If the dial is moving then you clearly have a leak-the odds are in this case that it is not in the property itself but in the supply pipe between the meter and the house, so it will not be visible.
If there is a stopcock within the property at or near the point of entry, turn that off and test. If the meter still moves, then the leak is upstream of that stopcock, i.e. external.

rollon65

Hello to all respondents once again.

The guy called to take a look at our water situation yesterday and I was delighted to see him take an inclusive view of things - the silly bills, our efforts to conserve our water consumption, the meter and the possibility of a leak, and so on.
He checked out the leaky cistern possibility and gave that a clean bill of health too.
I have to say that to date I have no complaint about their customer PR approach. If the solution of the problem follows on along the same lines it will be a great weight off our minds.
He asked questions about our life-style, looked at our previous bills, then called base to set up a very reasonable revised direct debit sum of £31.00 per month, to be paid over a 12 month period, based on what he calculated our typical consumption should be.
He said that there did appear to be a leak of some kind between my stopcock and the meter and has made me an appointment for Wednesday of next week for someone to come and try to actually locate the leak.
I tackled him about the cost implications of remedying it and he said (quite categorically) that if the leak was in the section of the pipe between my stopcock and the meter, the water authority would repair it for free. I looked at my wife and back at him and asked him to re-iterate that - which he did.
Why then do I receive those quite intimidating letter from Domestic & General acquainting me with the dire consequences of not having some kind of specific insurance in place for such situations?
Two feet beyond the meter is the boundary of my front garden.
My next-door neighbour was keen to hear the outcome as his own meter showed the same manifestations as ours - just a really miniscule amount of rotation of the centre dial, when apparently it should be completely static when no water is being drawn through the pipes beyond the meter. He has checked with the adjacent bungalow on the other side of him and the other side of my and it would appear that the two of us are the only ones with this problem, so he has asked me to make that known to my caller when he comes.
I shall be making a note of my meter readings before and after any work is done in order to get some idea of any "lost" water that may become an issue later.
We have been assigned a single point of contact to see this whole thing through with - which is good, as I have a list some half a dozen names long so far.
More next week, I guess.

Best regards - rollon65.

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

Good post, bumping