Outstanding Balance - Direct Debit

taylott8959

Hi,

I am new to the forum so I am appreciative of any help that can be offered here.
I am a customer of Thames Water for around 3 years now at my current address.

I recently switched service providers for my electricity which prompted me to log in to my Clear Score account which I haven’t not done for so many years as it alerted me to a new search on my credit file which was correct for this new utility. 

Whilst I was on there I noticed my score was particularly low from what I expected, I have otherwise perfect credit, I have never missed a single payment with regards to 100,000’s of pounds of credit repayments over the years and if anything have repaid early. 

When looking closer at the report I have noticed that there is an unpaid balance with regards to Thames Water.

Now I know I have been paying my Thames Water balance for years via Direct Debit so I thought this may be some kind of mistake.

I have checked with my bank and they have confirmed that my direct debit has always been paid on time and never rejected going back to 2017.

Since I only receive my bill on a 6 monthly basis and I have only received 5 bills in total over the years due to this, I logged onto my online account to see what the issue was.

I noticed there was a balance on there of £133.36 that seemed to match exactly the amount of a bill back in August 2017.

Looking back at my emails and my direct debit I can see that this was setup on the 21/08/2017 when the bill was issued a week earlier on 14/08/2017. 

My assumption would have been here when I have setup my account to pay via direc debit all charges would have been taken this way.

Now when I look at my bills I can see that the bill always states that ’No action required - Direct debit in setup’.

From this you can clearly see that the amount due has been aggregated to include all balances in to the total amount due, so I have never paid much attention to this and assumed that the direct debit have been adjusted an automatically deducted.
I have never knowingly underpaid any balance with regards to this.

The bills are clearly misleading which is how this oversight has occurred and I have received absolutely no separate specific correspondence at all from Thames Water; not a letter, email, phone call or text with regards to any outstanding balances and as you can see I have been paying the bills each month on time.

Had this been communicated to me or had been adjusted on my direct debit as I would have expected I would have paid the balance in full right away, which is what I have done as of today (09/05/2020) since I have become aware of this. 

Due to this error Thames Water have been putting marks on my credit score each month with regards to this clear oversight and I would like this to be rectified.

From my Equifax report I can see that there have been inconsistent markings with regards to this.

Mid ’17 - Mid ’18 it appears as ON-TIME

Mid ’18 - Start ’19 it appears as MISSED

Start ’19 - Mid ’19 it appears as ON-TIME

Mid ’19 - Start ’20 it appears as MISSED.

Any help you can offer on this would be much appreciated.
My end goal is to obviously get the marks removed but I don't know the best way to go about it, or if Thames Water refuse what options I have?
Regards
Tom

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

If Thames Water fail to correct what seems to be an obvious error, then contact the Consumer Council for Water https://www.ccwater.org.uk/households/

taylott8959

Thanks for that Cardew.
I had already taken a look into this, I need to give them 10 days from my initial written email and then another 10 days after that response before I can raise with them. 
Has anyone had experience getting a utility company removing marks from their file for something similar?
How long did it take to resolve?