Wrong meter, now the fun begins.
the_gardener
Forumite 31 Posts
in Water bills
For the last thirteen years I have been living in a flat on my own as a single person.Over the last three years the water bills grew larger very quickly and at the start of January 2020 I received a bill about four times my average at about £240 for 6 months.I queried this with Thames Water who said they could not send an engineer out due to covid.I said I would pay some of the bill and would wait for them to sort out the issue.
Six months passed and again the bill doubled.Again I refused to pay it until they sorted it with them via a twitter conversation agreeing to some of the payment until it was looked at.They agreed to freeze the account and to my surprise two weeks later i received a red final letter.One week after this another letter appeared threatening me with debt collectors.Having never been in debt in my life this really aggravated me to the point my stress levels went through the roof resulting in my G.P upping my blood pressure tablets.
Two weeks ago, I received another bill, this time £640 for the last 12 months.I finally got an engineer to visit today to fine the meter allocated to me in which I have been paying for the last thirteen years has a leak and is not even mine as he turned of that meter with the underground stopcock and my water still ran.The engineer could not find me meter as there was a car sitting on the manhole cover and the owners were out.
So i have to wait for another engineer to come out now when i get an appointment.
Does anyone know how Thames Water will go about working out my bill from 13 years ago and can I claim any compensation for the stress caused by Thames Waters inability to first cause my stress by threatening me with debt collectors and what can i do if i receive another bill from Thames Water before they find out what meter is actually mine?The engineer said they will put a stop on the account but they promised me that before and that ended up with my credit rating being affected.
Six months passed and again the bill doubled.Again I refused to pay it until they sorted it with them via a twitter conversation agreeing to some of the payment until it was looked at.They agreed to freeze the account and to my surprise two weeks later i received a red final letter.One week after this another letter appeared threatening me with debt collectors.Having never been in debt in my life this really aggravated me to the point my stress levels went through the roof resulting in my G.P upping my blood pressure tablets.
Two weeks ago, I received another bill, this time £640 for the last 12 months.I finally got an engineer to visit today to fine the meter allocated to me in which I have been paying for the last thirteen years has a leak and is not even mine as he turned of that meter with the underground stopcock and my water still ran.The engineer could not find me meter as there was a car sitting on the manhole cover and the owners were out.
So i have to wait for another engineer to come out now when i get an appointment.
Does anyone know how Thames Water will go about working out my bill from 13 years ago and can I claim any compensation for the stress caused by Thames Waters inability to first cause my stress by threatening me with debt collectors and what can i do if i receive another bill from Thames Water before they find out what meter is actually mine?The engineer said they will put a stop on the account but they promised me that before and that ended up with my credit rating being affected.
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If you can prove that your credit rating was indeed affected by a mistake by Thames Water, ask them to fix it and confirmation they have done it.
Thames Water might do a goodwill gesture if they know they dropped the ball but they won't pay a large compensation, unless you take proper legal action.