Water pipe leak caused by SSE that has costed us 4500 pounds so far. Refund Claim rejected by SSE

Dontpay

Hi All,
We would like your help in understanding how to challenge SSE on this matter. Please find the details of the incident and communications with SSE below. The Social Media team (whatsapp) forwarded this to Customer service team which in turn forwarded to legal team and they have rejected it stating there is no enough evidence. Please let me know if there is any way we can challenge them and atleast get the cost in-cured reclaimed. 
Details:
We lost power to our house on 7th Nov 2023. 
Raised it with SSE and the engineers came in and found out the main power supply wire was broken underground. In the process of finding the fault with the underground wire, they had to dig in and in that process they have broken one of our water pipes which they didnt realise as it was inside the house and underground.
We realised a day later that our boiler pressure is dropping and got our boiler engineer and he confirmed there has to be some leak so we need to call a leak detection company. 
We had no choice but to call a leak detection company and they were unsuccesful in finding the leak on the first attempt and it costed us a bomb. 
Like this it went on for 6 months during peak winter last year and we had to manage without heaters and hotwater. At every stage we communicated these with SSE team on whatsapp.
Finally another leak detection company identified the leak and fixed it in April 2024. 
We had in total spent around 4500£ in this whole process. Now when we ask SSE to refund atleast this expense they forwarded the request to customer complaints which in turn forwarded it to a legal team and the legal team said there is no enough evidence that the leak was caused by their work.
I had provided the entire whatsapp chat from 7th Nov till date which clearly shows the leak and discussions around it.
Unfortunately when the leak started happening we didnt think it might be due to the SSE work. It was only when the leak was detected we understood it was because of them as the leak was exactly adjacent to where they digged to fix the power cable.
Now that their legal team has rejected to refund the amount i want to understand how i can take legal action against them.
I am not even trying to get any extra compensation until now and only trying to reclaim the cost incured to us until now but they are being unfair to this request.
Any help on how i can proceed further will be really useful. I found that raising a case with Energy Ombudsman, is one way to go before taking legal action.
Can you all please advise. Thanks

MattMattMattUK

Dontpay said:

Hi All,
We would like your help in understanding how to challenge SSE on this matter. Please find the details of the incident and communications with SSE below. The Social Media team (whatsapp) forwarded this to Customer service team which in turn forwarded to legal team and they have rejected it stating there is no enough evidence. Please let me know if there is any way we can challenge them and atleast get the cost in-cured reclaimed. 
Details:
We lost power to our house on 7th Nov 2023. 
Raised it with SSE and the engineers came in and found out the main power supply wire was broken underground. In the process of finding the fault with the underground wire, they had to dig in and in that process they have broken one of our water pipes which they didnt realise as it was inside the house and underground.
We realised a day later that our boiler pressure is dropping and got our boiler engineer and he confirmed there has to be some leak so we need to call a leak detection company. 
We had no choice but to call a leak detection company and they were unsuccesful in finding the leak on the first attempt and it costed us a bomb. 
Like this it went on for 6 months during peak winter last year and we had to manage without heaters and hotwater. At every stage we communicated these with SSE team on whatsapp.
Finally another leak detection company identified the leak and fixed it in April 2024. 
We had in total spent around 4500£ in this whole process. Now when we ask SSE to refund atleast this expense they forwarded the request to customer complaints which in turn forwarded it to a legal team and the legal team said there is no enough evidence that the leak was caused by their work.
I had provided the entire whatsapp chat from 7th Nov till date which clearly shows the leak and discussions around it.
Unfortunately when the leak started happening we didnt think it might be due to the SSE work. It was only when the leak was detected we understood it was because of them as the leak was exactly adjacent to where they digged to fix the power cable.
Now that their legal team has rejected to refund the amount i want to understand how i can take legal action against them.
I am not even trying to get any extra compensation until now and only trying to reclaim the cost incured to us until now but they are being unfair to this request.
Any help on how i can proceed further will be really useful. I found that raising a case with Energy Ombudsman, is one way to go before taking legal action.
Can you all please advise. Thanks

You would need to prove, based on the balance of probabilities that SSE had both caused the damage and that they were liable. That would likely mean that the pipe was in good condition when it failed, rather than already in a damaged state and a small amount of soil movement caused it to fail. Do you have the section of pipe that was replaced? Do you have a full report from the company that finally fixed it? Do you know why the first company failed to find the leak and why did they charge you if they were unsuccessful? What would have been the cost if it had been fixed at the first attempt?

You may need to gather all your evidence together into one logical bundle, with a nice clear timeline, referencing the evidence, then speak to Citizen's Advice, as they are probably best to view the whole thing, even if people on here can attempt to help you making sure you have everything ready.

Scot_39

Proving absolute liability in this case will likely be difficult.

Despite the clear link to timing of SSE work.

A lot will come down to reports from any and all parties involved.

Reports of what they did for electric fix and what they found or initially even what they didnt find (did the first firm survey the actual location leak discovered ) re the state of pipe and the extent of original SSE earthworks around the leak.

How sound was the pipe, how close were sse digging etc.

How likely was it to have deteriorated between your 2 surveys etc. - so do you have any ability to claim on first leak survey etc for tine escalating costs etc.

So as above gather reports and if necessary think about getting an independent surveyor to review (*) and advise.

And then only if technically confident of success on basis of that review - suspect it is now given timescales - likely to come down to a legal claim via own solicitors.

Was there any detail given by SSE legal for rejection, or just a flat denial of claim.

(*) In a different scenario, for instance, we had to get a surveyors report when insurers challanged an 18-24m old roof repair after a bad leak after quick melt of heavy snow and ice build up behind 3ft tall parapet wall (ex council semi - nothing grand) causedc £1000s in damage to ceilings and contents. 
The building firm was so annoyed by insurers assessors report - they themselves offered to pay for their own surveyor report - we ourselves used initially a letter from the builders re work done and appropriate building codes  - that helped a bit - then our own surveyors report - to challange the insurers attempts to reduce payout. 
So in end came down to a surveyors vs assessors interpretation of building codes - the surveyors report won and the cost - in £100s - added by us to claim - saving £100s more they tried to cut from damage claim.


Sadly timescales here also worry me re any help you might have been covered for.

Suspect the 5 month time gap is likely also to be an issue if had any cover via home insurance.

Both for the claim and for that matter any approach to your own home insurance (**) and even if they didnt cover - perhaps any legal protection cover you may have also taken - that might help you pursue SSE etc. (Although again these policies only tend to act if very confident will win)

(**) As you said the damage was underground and inside the house - which could put it into the area of personal insurance.  Did you check scope of any cover in place at time.
For internal (home insurance ?) or if suspected external (pipe from road - third party ?) cover ?

(*) But beware some if not all insureres are very strict on timelines and won't want to entertain a claim unless notified almost immediately - not at best here 3m after - taking at best the once properly identified and located in Apr - if not in fact the earlier leak suspected by own heating engineer.)  But mitigating this potentially - your first no leak found survey.

BarelySentientAI

You didn't think the leak had anything to do with SSE.  Your boiler engineer didn't think the leak had anything to do with SSE.  The first leak-finding company didn't think the leak had anything to do with SSE.  Only six months later did a second company say that it was SSE's fault.  It's not very surprising that SSE legal would be a little sceptical about their liability.

To win your legal action you will need evidence.  A co-incidental timeline is circumstantial evidence at best, so you will be relying on the evidence from the second leak-finding company to prove that it is more likely that the leak was caused by an error on the part of SSE rather than anything else.  Do you know why they said it was SSE's fault?  Hopefully something more than "it was in sort of the same place"?

Something else to remember - "there was damage during their work" isn't the same (legally) as "they are liable for the damage during their work".  It's easier to connect than in many other circumstances, because active work was going on, but not guaranteed.

I'm not sure if the Ombudsman is the right place for this - I think it's more insurance / legal claims.  CAB might be placed to give some advice as mentioned earlier, or Legal Protection on your home insurance?

Scot_39

Or for that matter is the energy section of the forum the best place.

Dontpay

Thanks guys for the inputs.
I have the events recorded in detailed timeline of what happened since the first time the SSE engineers were called. Fortunately i was on whatsapp chat with them so detailed timelines is available.
I had provided the same with SSE as well when i raised it with them.

Few clarifications:
The leak started happening only after they did the digging work. It was clearly evidedent from the next day as the boiler pressure started dropping. 
It was underground just adjusant to where they did the digging.
The boiler engineer confirmed that it can only be a leak and asked us to reach out to a leak detection company.
The first company took a whole day, said there is a leak but were not capable enough to identify the leak. i had to pay them 915£
We were in constant touch with SSE on whatsapp about the leak
I even asked if SSE could send engineers to check the leak as they are the one's who digged around my house. They said they cant help.
then in April we had to find another leak detection company to try and find out the leak. Luckily these guys were able to find out the leak. A pipe was broken. They had mentioned that the broken pipe was the cause of the leak in their leak detection report. They charged another 750£ but atleast they found and fixed the leak.
All these reports along with invoices were sent to SSE.

BarelySentientAI

Nice timeline, but none of that proves that SSE are liable for the broken pipe.  It doesn't even prove that SSE broke the pipe.

What did your insurer say?

Dontpay

i havent reached out to my insurance. Will this be covered as part of Home insurance?
 I dont know as their document says it wont cover any leak detection

penners324

What have your home insurance said about it? It should be them pursuing SSE after they've paid you

penners324

Dontpay said:

i havent reached out to my insurance. Will this be covered as part of Home insurance?
 I dont know as their document says it wont cover any leak detection

Recheck the wording. It will cover the repair though.

They should have been informed before any work was carried out.

lohr500

Just for clarity, did you pay £915 and then £750 for the two lots of leak detection and repair by the 2nd leak detection team?

If so, where does the £4500 come from as mentioned in your initial post? Does the balance cover the heating engineer's costs and the cost to heat your house by another means?