Anglian Water and credit rating 2 February 2015 at 8:22PM edited 2 February 2015 at 8:25PM in Water bills 8 replies 8K views

mummaB_3

I continued with a direct debit with Anglian Water after they never sent me bills and allowed me to clock up a bill over £1000.
When they finally sent me a letter last August I paid £500 immediately and agreed the rest be paid monthly by upping my DD.

I ' had,' an unblemished credit score and applied for a loan at the weekend. Both my husband and I were declined!??

We did an experian check to find out that Anglian Water have put 6 late payments on our account and a delinquency. To cut a long story short since August when I paid the 500 they have not collected the direct Debits.

I have Spoken at length with them today and they are going to contact experian and take the negativity off. They have said it is their fault as for some reason they never took the payments.

I want to know of I am also able to get compensation for this either via my direct debit guarantee or estoppel law?

Cardew

I suggest you contact the Consumer Council for Water for advice.

lovingthedeals

I would ask Anglian directly for compensation for the stress they have caused by their failures with late billing, not taking Direct Debit and incorrect information sent to Experian as you were willing to pay! Tell them you will make complaint to CCW and I'm sure they will offer you a resolution.

teejay72

Wow, I'd love to know how you've got them to back track on this please as I can not get them to budge. My story is very slightly different though as I have been paying standing orders weekly since July 2011 yet they have recorded a negative mark on my Experian report and stating that I've missed 6 months payments also. They have confirmed all this in writing yet will not remove the inaccurate information recorded!
Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

GingerBob_3

Also, it's a good idea to ban your water company from doing a credit check on you. Put it in writing that you disallow such checks. It's unclear (to me) whether they can still furnish your account data to the CRAs without your agreement, but you CAN stop them using the CRAs for credit checks. Don't furnish water companies with personal information over and above your surname and first initial. Ideally, let them know you as "the occupier".

jannyPlasticNortherner

Hello - I have just read your post with great interest as a similar thing has happened to me.
I rather naively assumed that Anglian Water were taking D/D payments and did not think to look into/question it, until I discovered 2 Court Payment Delinquency orders on my Experian Credit rating.
Anglian have never sent bills to my home address, and having contacted them about the whole situation, I thought I had cleared it all up (£101 per month to settle current and the two outstanding bills and also requesting paper bills to my home address).
6 months on and Anglian Water are contacting me again to say that all payments are still outstanding and that the D/D's were cancelled. Shouldn't be too hard to get info off bank to see if they had attempted to take any money at all. I still haven't receievd any bills as yet either, but I did get a confirmation of the D/D schedule.
Any advice on how to tackle this would be v.appreciated.
I have conversed with Anglian via e-mail as I have a personal audit trail - I won't ring unless I really have to as calls can be 'lost' and I have no proof of what was said.
I have contacted the Consumer Council for Water but they weren't very helpful.

samsmoot

You could look into making a claim for damage and distress under Section 13 of the data protection act.

Cardew

jannyPlasticNortherner wrote: »

Hello - I have just read your post with great interest as a similar thing has happened to me.
I rather naively assumed that Anglian Water were taking D/D payments and did not think to look into/question it, until I discovered 2 Court Payment Delinquency orders on my Experian Credit rating.
Anglian have never sent bills to my home address, and having contacted them about the whole situation, I thought I had cleared it all up (£101 per month to settle current and the two outstanding bills and also requesting paper bills to my home address).
6 months on and Anglian Water are contacting me again to say that all payments are still outstanding and that the D/D's were cancelled. Shouldn't be too hard to get info off bank to see if they had attempted to take any money at all. I still haven't receievd any bills as yet either, but I did get a confirmation of the D/D schedule.
Any advice on how to tackle this would be v.appreciated.
I have conversed with Anglian via e-mail as I have a personal audit trail - I won't ring unless I really have to as calls can be 'lost' and I have no proof of what was said.
I have contacted the Consumer Council for Water but they weren't very helpful.

Welcome to the forum.


If I understand you correctly you 'naively assumed' Anglian water were taking DD payments and never checked your account?


After thinking you had sorted it out and agreeing to pay £101 monthly by DD, for the next six months you never looked at your account to see if this was actually happening?


Why were The Consumer Council for Water not very helpful? They normally jump all over the water companies if they are at fault.


What do you want to happen?

matelodave

Compensation for what? - failing to check your bank statements to ensure that payments were being taken. If there had been problems before then it would seem like a good idea to check to make sure that it was sorted out rather than just hoping.