Thames Water meter readings and bills issue

CrochetingFanatic

Good morning. I'm looking for some advice and support regarding thames water bills.

Back in August I got a new water bill. I'm on a meter but hadn't sent in a reading for quite sometime being overwhelmed with work and stuff.

So I decided to get on top of it. My reading was quite a bit lower than the estimated. Easy I thought I'll just update them all will be fine.

No it wasn't. First the reading put my £500 in credit I got the usual blah blah we will use it for the next bill. Okay. But they still wanted to put my direct debit up? That's when I said. No the account is clear give me my money back cancel my direct debit and I will pay the next bill as it comes.

This took days to sort out and ended up having to be escalated as I then randomly got a bill for £800 a few days later. Eventually a week or two later my balance said £0. Excellent I thought and each month I've saved some money separately to pay the bill when it comes in.

Sorry this is so long.

Now my new bill comes in January they estimated I used quite a bit more than I did. Fine I thought I will send them a new reading easy. 

Nope.

The new readings where logged it said thank you for your readings. But never made it to my account profile. I spoke to customer service as my bill is due. Asking for a a new one based on actual readings. He tells me I have never submitted a meter reading since 2020. I had to send a screenshot of my account to get him to admit I have.

Then he takes my meter reading and issues a new bill. Which is £25 higher!

I asked him what was he doing I used less than the estimated how can the bill go up? He says well ive taken it back to 2020. Why? My balance was clear and sorted in August I even got a refund. He won't say just that thats the way its done. 

I've escalated the problem but I'm still not sure what on earth is going on. £272 for six months now he "adjusted" my bill.

Woodstok2000

Ask Thames Water to send you a breakdown of all the usage charges, bills and payments over that period.

In the mean time Can you see online all your account details, readings and payments, going back to 2020?

MattMattMattUK

Download copies of your bills from the site, as well as all the meter readings showing on the site and double check the numbers, so it on a spreadsheet so you can send it to Thames Water if necessary.

CrochetingFanatic

I can access bills and the meter reading from 2020 but the payments only show up for a year and it says I can only request up to to years.

Im baffled as to why 2020 I've been a customer in this flat since 2006 and had the meter installed shortly after moving in.

I'm quite frustrated as in August they said the account was clear.

MattMattMattUK

CrochetingFanatic said:

I can access bills and the meter reading from 2020 but the payments only show up for a year and it says I can only request up to to years.

You should be able to get the payments from your own bank statements.

CrochetingFanatic said:

Im baffled as to why 2020 I've been a customer in this flat since 2006 and had the meter installed shortly after moving in.

Thames Water were pretty good at reading meters up until the lockdowns, so a lot of people got a last read in late 2019 or early 2020 but then found that meters were not read for up to three years, none were read in 2020 after the lockdowns started and most were not read again until 2022. As you have found out some of those reads were quite different to estimates, people who had higher historical usage had overpaid, those who had historically lower usage faced higher bills to catch up.

CrochetingFanatic said:

I'm quite frustrated as in August they said the account was clear.

Rather than looking at "clear", work out what the actual position is from the meter reads and billing periods. Use the reference periods for standing charges and then set out the unit rates in the correct periods so you can calculate everything properly.