water bill in credit!!

Brie

So came home from a jolly away to the normal stack of post and discovered when the water bill was opened that we are in credit.  This in itself is not that unusual - last bill taking us up to Sept 2023 had an £18+ credit on it.  But this one was £217+!!!

My first reaction was that I should ring them and get them to stop the DD if there's that much credit on the account - normally we pay about £13 a month so this is what 18 months worth? Then I decided to have a closer look at bill.  It actually goes back to March 2022 up to mid March 2024.  

Use showing as follows:

March - Sept 2022 17 cubic meters  (meter reading 1809 - 1826)
Sept 22 - March 2023 51 cubic meters  (meter reading 1826 - 1877)
March - Sept 2023  0 (zero) cubic meters  (meter reading 1877 - 1877)
Sept 23 - March 2024 0 (zero) cubic meters  (meter reading 1877 - 1877)

I looked at a previous bill which showed:

March - Sept 2023 66 cubic meters (meter reading 1939 - 2005 both estimated)

So somehow according to them my meter has jumped back substantially.  Is that possible?  The meter number and serial number are the same so that's not the problem.  

To make matters worse they appear to have charged twice for the fixed charge, once on the original bill and then again on the new one.  

I suppose I'll have to go back and do a complete reconciliation possibly back to when we moved in.  As we have no access to the meter (don't even know where is it, probably with the stop cork that no one has yet been able to find) it's not like I can check the readings are actually correct.

I must admit I hadn't noticed that the previous readings were estimates....another on to watch out for.

fyi - Bournemouth Water should it make any difference.  

MattMattMattUK

I would suspect the 1877 estimate was too high and the zero usage reads are because the meter is still below that reading. 

A friend recently had this, although the other way around to you, he was away for most of the first six months when he had a meter installed, very low usage, Thames Water then used that to estimate usage for the next three years, before reading the meter in January, he how has a large bill has he was not only using more water than during the original estimate, but also using quite a bit over the average as well. 

Brie

MattMattMattUK said:

I would suspect the 1877 estimate was too high and the zero usage reads are because the meter is still below that reading. 

A friend recently had this, although the other way around to you, he was away for most of the first six months when he had a meter installed, very low usage, Thames Water then used that to estimate usage for the next three years, before reading the meter in January, he how has a large bill has he was not only using more water than during the original estimate, but also using quite a bit over the average as well. 

Yes except that all the readings 1809 - 1877 are actual readings not estimates.  

And the bill says that the reading in March 2023 and also in Sept 2023 and March 2024 were all 1877.  So the meter hasn't changed in that time.  Like we haven't used any water in a full year.  Believe me we do shower occasionally!!!

KittenChops

I had this with south east water a few years back at our last house - we'd not long switched to a meter so I didn't notice it (because they were using the credit on the account) until I received a letter from them asking if the house was unoccupied.  Turns out the meter had broken.  They fixed it pretty quickly & I wasn't charged anything for the period that the meter was broken - I assumed they would estimate the usage but they wrote it off.

MattMattMattUK

Brie said:

MattMattMattUK said:

I would suspect the 1877 estimate was too high and the zero usage reads are because the meter is still below that reading. 

A friend recently had this, although the other way around to you, he was away for most of the first six months when he had a meter installed, very low usage, Thames Water then used that to estimate usage for the next three years, before reading the meter in January, he how has a large bill has he was not only using more water than during the original estimate, but also using quite a bit over the average as well. 

Yes except that all the readings 1809 - 1877 are actual readings not estimates.  

And the bill says that the reading in March 2023 and also in Sept 2023 and March 2024 were all 1877.  So the meter hasn't changed in that time.  Like we haven't used any water in a full year.  Believe me we do shower occasionally!!!

Ah ok, broken meter then, who knows how long it will take them to figure that out!