Revised water bill

KnittingGirl

Hello, this is my first ever blog so hope I get this right...
Wondering if any of you can help? I have just received a revised water bill for £700+.  We’re a family of 5, have a water meter and do use a fair amount of water but my usual bill is around £170 -£200 every 6 months or so.  I was nearly blown away by £700 and could see that although I always pay the bills on time and in full that they had revised the consumption back to 2019.  I called Thames Water (or was that South Africa?) and was told I’d been sent bills and not paid them previously so I requested a statement, I couldn’t understand why I’d not received the bills and why they had not demanded payment if they had been sent and not paid.  The statement clearly shows this is not the case and I have paid every bill promptly and in full but rather they have revised consumption.  I’ve looked at previous bills and notice they are all estimated except the most recent.  I can’t understand this as I have had a number of visits since 2019 to read the meter. I’m going to write to question the billing but wondered if any of you have experienced similar or could suggest how I best tackle this.  All help will be gladly received. Thanks

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

One explanation of your problem often(but not always) occurs because of the computer billing system. If you don't challenge the first under-estimated bill, and submit revised meter readings, it is the start of a sequence that leads to your current issue. The computer algorithm(program) will reject meter readings that it 'thinks' is a mistake. So even though a correct meter readings are subsequently submitted the computer ignores the readings thinking it is a 'mistake'  and produces a bill based on another under-estimated reading; that sequence continues until there is human intervention to input a correct 'actual' meter reading and thus produce an accurate bil; I assume you are not disputing the meter reading on the latest bill??

You don't give your water company but it is worth trying to get a reduction on your bill, pointing out that the meter had been read by a meter reader several times; but their defence will be you should have taken action if the estimated bills were incorrect. If their response is unsatisfactory you can 'threaten' to take your case to The Consumer Council for Water or Ombudsman; they might then make a 'goodwill' reduction.

It is pertinent to point out that a family of 5 will on average use 250 cubic metres of water a year. Without even knowing your company, if you use that amount it will certainly be more than £150 to £200 every 6 months.

Good luck!

freesha

KnittingGirl said:

 I called Thames Water (or was that South Africa?)

Eh? Please expand

matelodave

Have you yet done the obvious and gone out to read the meter yourself - it's the first thing I do when I get a bill. Although that said, I read it every month anyway just to make sure that there's nothing wrong which in my case has twice paid dividends in the past ten years. It identified two leaks in the underground pipe. The first some seven years ago has caused a dip in our driveway and wasted over 35 cu.m of water and another last summer which accounted for another 20 cu.m. We've now had the whole underground pipe between the meter and the internal stop valve replaced.

As Cardew says £300-£400 a year is quite low for a family of five so if that's all you've been paying against estimated bills then it sounds as though you've managed to rack up a fair amount of arrears if you've not been checking them. You need to check back to the last actual reading and see how much you've used since then and then do the sums to see how much it should have cost against how much you've paid. I don't think that water companies have any back-billing limitation rules like the energy companies so they can probably go back six years.

Cardew

There apparently is a Thames Water call centre in South Africa, there have been complaints about their 'robotic service'. Google gives some references; e.g.

'After endless phone calls , they use call centre in South Africa , using voip , so conversations are hard '.