Possible to fix bad credit rating from Welsh Water, due to not getting invoice or reminders?

comeandgo

Why should a company have to spend more money in collecting overdue monies because you did not check your spam folder.  You requested the bill by email which is what they did.  Your excuse that you did not see it is the same old excuse all non payers use and yes, I do know when my bills are due and will chase up if required.  And I think you will now.

infocomo

“ You could have added their email address to your safe sender list so it didn't go to your spam box.” - but I don’t know what their email address they send bills from would be

I think a major point in all this is I don’t think anyone should have credit ratings drop for not checking a spam folder at most every 30 days. We don’t actually know it went in there because I do check spam now and again but I can’t say if I did within 30 days of the bill (and I don’t know what the bill date would be to expect it). 

The point of reminders is to ensure things like those don’t slip through the net. I don’t understand why Welsh water prefer to report the CRA all that time instead of just sending reminders. I run a business (bit smaller than welsh water mind!) and I send frequent reminders to my customers because many of them are not reliable payers. they het an invoice, then just before the 30 days is up another one to remind them it’s due soon, then every 10 days after it’s unpaid. They eventually pay after a few and I don’t need to report it to small claims. I give them a very long time to pay before I cut off the service I provide. Some have had difficulties in the past so I give them longer. They eventually pay and they stay happy loyal customers. 

Trouble with welsh water is I can’t move anywhere else. I have to use them. So they have no incentive to improve their processes. Situations like this customers should have more rights. 

infocomo

Also if it does go into spam it’s the senders responsibility to fix the reason why. The more I think about it the less I think it went into spam. They’re bound to have their domain and email settings all top notch and not be filtered as spam. All other bills I bet don’t. So I think this spam issue is a red herring, I highly doubt it went into it. In which case I just didn’t get the invoice, all the more reasons to send reminders. 

Before email, everyone would be pretty miffed if the postal bill didn’t arrive and you were reported to cra without a chance to pay. 

infocomo

comeandgo said:

Why should a company have to spend more money in collecting overdue monies because you did not check your spam folder.

Have you ever been in a position to invoice customers? If so, then you know we don’t live in a perfect world, people do not pay on time and need prodding. That’s just how it is in this world and I imagine most companies are the same. Unless there’s direct debit (but even then people receive alerts if there’s not enough money to cover it). So it’s just the way it is I’m afraid, companies DO have to spend on resources to chase payments. I’d love to be in that perfect world where all my customers pay right away!  . I’m not the sort of human being who would report them right away for missed payments without plenty of warnings.

sambaird

Ah mate… just give it up.
You’re in the wrong. Your credit history is accurate. Accept it. Move on.
Have a direct debit set up for your bills in the future and all of this could be avoided.

infocomo

sambaird said:

Ah mate… just give it up.
You’re in the wrong. Your credit history is accurate. Accept it. Move on.
Have a direct debit set up for your bills in the future and all of this could be avoided.

I don’t think I can setup a direct debit without having information like a bill or account number or anything? As stated I just bought the property so it was not linked to me when I emailed them to give them my details. 

Its quite a serious matter for me and not something to just accept. I can’t get a mortgage because I was not sent a bill to pay £70 Welsh water. I’m not prepared to just accept that situation it’s crazy. 

jpsartre

infocomo said:

I can’t get a mortgage because I was not sent a bill to pay £70 Welsh water.

But you were sent a bill, you just missed it. You can argue all day long that it's poor customer service not to send out reminders before defaulting an account (and I don't disagree with you) but that doesn't change the fact that the missed payments (and subsequent default) are correcly recorded on your credit history.

ThisnotThat

infocomo said:

Also if it does go into spam it’s the senders responsibility to fix the reason why. The more I think about it the less I think it went into spam. They’re bound to have their domain and email settings all top notch and not be filtered as spam. All other bills I bet don’t. So I think this spam issue is a red herring, I highly doubt it went into it. In which case I just didn’t get the invoice, all the more reasons to send reminders. 

Before email, everyone would be pretty miffed if the postal bill didn’t arrive and you were reported to cra without a chance to pay. 

No, it's YOUR responsibility to make sure your spam filters aren't wonky.  Unfortunately you've delegated that responsibility to a third party and you really have no control over it.  You get what you pay for (and in this case don't pay for.)

Emails generally don't just go missing. Perhaps your badly configured email server has a habit of losing emails, but large corporate email servers generally don't, and it doesn't matter anyway. If they'd sent a letter and you'd never received it a court would still take the view that it was delivered, even if it wasn't.

You were expecting a bill and never chased it up.  As a home-owning adult you are expected to take a certain amount of responsibility when it comes to paying bills.  You can't even argue that you had no idea you were running up a bill.  There is no circumstance where you wouldn't be accruing a debt with the water company.  Even with a water meter and no usage, they'd be billing for wastewater disposal.

MaryNB

infocomo said:

sambaird said:

Ah mate… just give it up.
You’re in the wrong. Your credit history is accurate. Accept it. Move on.
Have a direct debit set up for your bills in the future and all of this could be avoided.

I don’t think I can setup a direct debit without having information like a bill or account number or anything? As stated I just bought the property so it was not linked to me when I emailed them to give them my details. 

Its quite a serious matter for me and not something to just accept. I can’t get a mortgage because I was not sent a bill to pay £70 Welsh water. I’m not prepared to just accept that situation it’s crazy. 

You went 9 months after getting the house without even having an account with them?? I mean if you knew you were a customer for that month what did you think would happen? I've had important emails go to spam before and I'm sure I've lost the odd important email by not checking it frequently but I know if I'm using a utility company's service that I need to pay them.

I was dealing with People's Energy when I first moved into my house last year and chased them because they were slow to set up my account. That was only about 2 weeks. I would never have just sat on it waiting to hear. I needed to pay them!

maisie_cat

infocomo said:

I assumed welsh water would have good processes in place. I honestly don’t know anyone who puts every utility billing date in their calendar and sets reminders to chase up after 2 weeks. Do you do that? Can you honestly say that for every bill/direct debit you have you have a reminder to chase up if not received/collected after a few weeks? I’m going to bet you don’t. And if you do, I’ll say your 0.000001% or less who do. 

Honestly, to make that statement that I should chase it up is ridiculous. Tell me who does that??? Do you do that? Do you really know if one of your utility companies don’t collect a payment or send an invoice you’re on the phone the following week chasing it? 

I’m sorry but it’s ridiculous to say it’s my responsibility to chase invoices for all utilities and any service sent to me. I don’t even know if I have debt with them until they send me a bill. 

I check every direct debit including Welsh Water, when we moved to Wales in December 2019 I found WW was amongst the easiest to setup. The direct debit has always gone through and I get bills by email. I logged on to WW for the first few months to check that the DD was be credited to the correct account, and once I'd established it was correct I just check the DD has gone through.
As soon as you are consuming a utility you are running up a bill, to know that you are doing so and just ignore the fact that you have not seen a bill is asking for trouble.