Do you want to be able to choose your water company?

Esort

Just to be clear, would everyone understand that their water would still come from the same place? You would not suddenly get Welsh tasting water in east Anglia for example!

duoszle

My long held view is that water, electric and gas should be nationalised with fixed charges for all customers and profits being reinvested in the businesses to effect improvements/cheaper tariffs. In the absence of this I believe water should go the same way as electric and gas, i.e. open to competition. To start with everyone would have to be on a water meter, which won't suit some as paying on rateable value currently gives unlimited use, but water is not broadband. In my part of North Wales we have one option, which is a private company which operates well with excellent customer services. But we have to pay what they say. Elsewhere in Wales the supplier is a not-for-profit company. The regulator must ensure a fair deal for the customer and the suppliers must not be greedy.

Esort

I just want to reply to a previous poster that I have experienced excellent customer service with Anglian Water, and previously had terrible service from Severn Trent, though we are going back a few years there. Customer Service is quite a variable thing, I think many customers will just choose on price, which surely will just create the same situation as with gas and electricity, where those who don't change regularly are stung, paying more to finance the cheap deals for those who move suppliers. How are Ofwat going to protect the vulnerable? After all, we know with energy that it is often the vulnerable who are paying the most as they don't regularly change suppliers.

badmemory

It is just a gimmick to get people to accept water meters. Guess what will have to happen as soon as that happens. The prices will go back up - they will have to so all the (some foreign) owners can still make the same profits. Who on earth is going to waste their time shopping round for a saving of 50p a month? They will probably land up with the same misleading switching sites that ofgen have insisted on, just to make things worse.

cocker100

Just to let you all know........

THIS IS ALREADY A DONE DEAL!!!!!!!

I work in the water industry and this retail competition is set to come into force from January 2017 for non domestic customers (i.e. businesses and industry) only.

The regulators are then looking to bring it in for domestic customers from around 2020/2021 if things go to plan.

All the water companies are spending millions in preparation for this creating new departments to help keep existing customers and poach new customers from their rivals!

My colleagues and I believe this will end up being a complete nightmare.

Eg.

You switch supplier from A to B.

You then experience discoloured water coming out of your taps.

You ring your new provider B to complain, but because they do not actually supply the water which is coming out of your tap (because water is a physical substance and cannot magically be beamed across the country from your new supplier) they cannot help you, and advise you to contact your old supplier A, who actually still supply you with the water itself.

You then ring supplier A to complain who then says, "Sorry mate, you left us and you are no longer our customer, go away!"

If you get discoloured water coming out of your taps, the advice is always to let the taps run until it runs clear. If you are on a metered supply then this will cost you money. Currently, if this happens in our company and you ring in, you get a credit put on your account to compensate you for having to waste your metered water.

This works when the billing, reservoirs, infrastructure etc are all controlled from the same company.

Now imagine the scenario if you had switched supplier and you were billed from another company.

Would your new supplier, (the one you pay your bill to) compensate you for running your taps to waste for a fault in the system of the supplier who actually supplies the physical water?

Answer: NO - why would they? It's not their fault that the water is coming out discoloured!

This is just one example of the problems I think this will cause, and I genuinely believe it will result in increased water bills for us all.

Having worked the the industry for over 20 years, I also believe like others have said in this thread, that the industry should be re-nationised and should be run as not for profit companies. The money generated by our bills should be pumped back into the system to upgrade treatment works and pipe infrastructure to make our water supply the best in the world, not given to our greedy shareholders who are only after one thing - to make as much profit as they can! After all, we all need water to survive so why should people make money from it????

System

majicka wrote: »

Monopolies are always bad for consumers. Particularly, as in the case of Thames Water, the said monopoly has been bought by overseas private equity groups and banks, which have loaded it up with debt and paid themselves hundreds of millions of pounds in dividends. Many water companies are clearly taking advantage of their monopolistic positions, and consumers should have the ability to shop around.

!

The point that you are missing is that there is no National Grid for water as there is for gas and electricity. It doesn't follow that Customer A who lives in the North and uses the same amount of water as Customer B who lives in the South will pay the same if they both switch to, say, Severn Trent Water. The regional price differences will be the differences in costs associated with water services in a particular region. These costs/prices are already carefully regulated by OFWat.

I live in the Severn Trent area. If I switched to Thames Water, my supply would still come from Severn Trent. They would continue to deal with sewerage and surface water. Yes, my billing might come from Thames Water who, in turn, would pay Severn Trent but, unlike gas and electricity where the supplier pays to have gas and electricity added to the National Grid to cover its customer use, the savings will as OFWat has suggested be very modest.

Build a national grid for water, then switching suppliers would make a lot of sense. We are a long way off doing that.

surfsister

well I moved to a house with a water meter and the company told me I'd save money and then they only read the meter once a year!!!! So how can I even tell what I've used. i thought the whole point was to be able to check how much we've used quarterly. Or am I missing something.

Please don't say read it myself as it's down a filthy dirty hole on the busy path and impossible to read anyway!!

checkmate

Yes, I would like to see competition between water companies vying for our custom but I would like to see British-owned companies in the market that might invest in water collection instead of letting it flood the valleys on its way to the sea. We have been soundly cheated by the foreign-owned companies who were allowed by a toothless OFWAT to spend our money on making us have water-meters instead of building reservoirs and bore-holes to collect our plentiful rainfall. Plans to build reservoirs in the South-East of England were ditched in the run-up to privatisation and now we are told that WE are wasting water at a time when fields are regularly flooded, rivers burst their banks and car-washes continue to make profit for the French owners of our water. OFWAT has proved useless at consumer protection and it's time the water companies were brought back into public ownership. Then BYE-BYE OFWAT! or is it OFTWAT?

mrsp1987

For a saving of £6 a year it's not worth it at all. Then again I'm with Severn Trent and reading the comments on here it sounds as if I'm lucky in that regard.

We got a water meter when we moved in. The family before us had 2 adults and 2 teenage children. It's just me and my husband. Before we got our meter we had paid so much in RV that after the meter was installed we were so far in credit that we paid £5 per month for over a year. We now only pay £12.10 a month. Why should the water company guess how much I use based on the size of my property when I can pay for what I actually use?
You wouldn't expect British Gas (or whomever) to totally guess how much you use based on family size and proper size would you?

Rather than letting customers choose their water supplier there needs to be more reform of the water companies/industry themselves. Poor customer service, confusion about sewerage and standing water charges, poor maintenance and upkeep. These are the issues that need to be resolved. Capping the amount companies can increase their charges by would be helpful to limit and potentially reverse the massive disparity across the country.

As far as bundles go I do not want everything provided by one company. Grouping TV, phone and broadband is the closest I will come to bundling and even then I'm not enamoured with it. I want my water company to focus 100% on providing water and my Sky to focus 100% on providing TV and British Gas to concentrate 100% on my gas and electricity.

Anyway those are my 2 pennies worth and as I'm lucky enough to be provided by Severn Trent and I've not had any problems with them in 5 years why on earth would I want to rock the boat?

4$£&*(£$&*(!

I'm not sure if this point is relevant on the consultation but far more important for me I would like consideration for no standing charges. Although rare in the industry my supplier offered SoLow rate with Anglian Water and they withdrew it last year saying it did nothing to drive less use and favored single householders which I found untrue and I am paying almost double my previous bill.