Beware getting help with your Water Bill

poppasmurf_bewdley

kaMelo said:

Barclays have been slashing credit limits on their credit card for many people, there was a full thread on the subject a while ago. After being hit with a large fine from the FCA for failing to look after customers in financial difficulty, it's not really a surprise they are preventing people in financial difficulty getting any further into debt by reducing credit limits.

To be fair to Severn Trent, the website is pretty clear that The Big Difference Scheme is an arrangement to pay plan and your credit file will be marked appropriately.

https://bigdiff.co.uk/login.php
The Big Difference Scheme is a non-standard payment arrangement to help those who need assistance with their water charges. If accepted onto this scheme Severn Trent Water will share information with credit reference agencies, and this could influence your credit status.

They do refer to it now, but when I signed up 2 years ago, it was marketed as "Are you on a low income" and there was no mention of affecting your credit score. The initial recruitment for the scheme was apparently done by an outside company, who probably got paid by the number of people signed up.  I was on the scheme for almost 2 years before my credit file was altered so it's something they've only recently begun doing.  

jackied711

This happened to me too…only difference was it happened when I told them i wanted to cancel the big difference scheme. Barclaycard wanted to raise my credit limit to £4500 but when i told severn trent i was cancelling their scheme (about two weeks later), Barclay card dropped my limit down to £100 and told me that it was because a bad mark had been lodged against my account (by this stage i had paid off my severn trent bill in full and was not in any kind of arrangement or debt with anyone).BC also told me I’d never be able to get another credit again because of this ‘mark’…….I did though but just not with them.

Now to the big difference and the reason I cancelled it…..like the original poster, I applied for the Big Difference and was told that it would cut at least 20% off my yearly big. They then put me on a pay monthly scheme (previously I paid twice yearly on receipt of a bill). From this point onwards, I was locked into paying a large amount every month, and never recieved a bill and never could see my meter readings. When it was coming up to a year on the scheme they tried to automatically renew onto it but by this time i was totally fed up paying such a huge amount monthly (£30-40 every month), when previously my bills had varied from anything from £70-120 every 6 MONTHS!!! Finally managed to speak to someone half truthful at severn trent (I suspect he had not long worked for Severn Trent), and explained that the monthly bills were too high compared to what i had been paying every six months…he did try to argue that it couldn’t be possible as my account had a 20% discount on it but said he’d check, which when he did…then he said ‘oh yes it is far higher on the big difference as we don’t read the meters for people on this scheme and it’s estimated on the size of the house and we estimate the amount of people living there’!!!   I live in a two bed house with a teenager and they’d been estimating the amount of water 5 people would use. End of October my meter was finally read again after 12 months and i could finally see and compare my readings from before the big difference scheme to October this year and what they’d estimated  was extortionate on the big difference, the maths showed that I’d paid nearly £200 more for the year that i was stuck on this awful scheme than  I would’ve paid if I’d never applied for it! …I’m sure the big difference works for some people but all it really is locking people in a pay monthly plan

Amathyst

STW did that to me and it lowered my credit rating by enough for me to notice, I did ask them about it but they made excuses for it. Never had an issue before last year though.