united utilities

birchscrub

take a deep breath and write a full account to the chief exec philip green or
Clive Elphick, MD for the water side of the business. the email addresses might be firstname.lastname@uuplc.co.uk - certainly used to be.

finish restating the full facts - the flat has never been on a meter, you have only been trying to ascertain what you should be paying, rather than avoiding payment etc etc.

Ofwat seldom get involved in individual complaints - normally writing to them should get the company to sort itself out - but clearly it hasn't. CCWater don't do that much without a good poke from you too.

It isn't clear from what you've written if you have lodged this as a formal complaint with the company - if you havn't then obviously you should - you need to tell them that you wish to register it asa formal complaint - you arguing with them over the phone won't make it onto their register, which affects their scoring with ofwat which affects how much money they can get from us next time the price rises are agreed.

and don't forget two of the big companies have just been investigated the the SFO - they are a dodgy bunch!

check this out if you haven't yet seen it - the water woes booklet:

http://www.ofwat.gov.uk/aptrix/ofwat/publish.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/waterwoes.pdf/$FILE/waterwoes.pdf

supermezzo

It has been escalated to a complaint twice now - the first time they entered it onto their system as resolved when they decided to say that I'd agreed to pay the amount that they stated.
Today is the last day of the second complaint time restraint (for them to get back to me) and so far, I've heard nothing.

supermezzo

My mistake, I have now heard from them todat after all - that's right, another demand! And it's dated well after I last had correspondence with them as well.

supermezzo

The 'resolution' letter as they call it has dropped through the letter box, dated the 22nd.
They have decided that £200 is their final offer, with an option to pay in full or with a payment plan.
Rang them to day to organise that only to discover that they've sent it on to a debt collection agency again!
They're supposedly ringing back in 24 hours to confirm that it's been called back from the debt people - nowhere on this letter does it state a time scale. What if we'd been on holiday or the letter had got lost?

supermezzo

Quick (and hopefully, final) update for anyone still with the will to live after reading this:-

1) Letter duly arrived a week later to say that it had been re-called from the debt people and asking us to call them to arrange a payment plan

2) Operator in the call centre demanded full payment of original payment

3) Re-called complaints dept, who further reduced the bill for the obnoxious way we were spoken to by the previous operator

4) Letter has finally arrived for the correct amounts to go out on the right dates from the correct bank account details