Thames Water billing disarray

sflow

I set up a Thames Water account at a property I owned in 2018. It was not metered. I received a bill once a year and it was paid in 12 instalments throughout the year until another one was issued, We did not receive bills in the post consistently however as soon as a bill was received it was paid. Eventually we asked and were migrated onto their online billing portal

In 2021, Thames Water migrated their billing onto a new system. Confusion reigned!!! We were unable to download any bills from the online portal ( we have video shots) and we called them several times to escalate but no one ever came back to us. We kept receiving text messages for amounts due which we initially paid up, however when repeated requests for the paid bills never materialised, we decided in 2021 we would only pay when we had actually received a bill for our records - and sanity!!!. As we have now discovered, after we finally received a full account statement in 2024 and reconciling with bank account payments and discovered that we have paid Thames Water over £700 from our bank accounts which does not show on their accounts statement despite the fact the account statement shows balances prior to the date of the payment. There is also an opening balance in 2021 which Thames Water have so far failed to explain how this number had been derived. TW have never provided a satisfactory explanation where these payments of over £700 had disappeared to as they weren't being offset against our account balance.

During 2021, we kept getting demands for payment but insisted on receiving a bill first before making a payment. As the online billing portal was not working, we asked them to post three times but failed to receive any of the bills despite giving alternative addresses. We asked them to email but they refused on ground of data protection - we were surprised as they had sent bills without any issue via email before. So we told them they had to find a way of getting a copy of the bill to us.

The next thing we received was a letter from debt collectors. We explained we just wanted a bill. They raised a complaint and TW denied we had ever contacted them regarding non-receipt of bills. We raised a Subject Access Request and never received a response from TW. We never heard from TW or debt collection for several months. Then we received a letter from a new debt collection agency without a copy of the bill. Fed up to our back teeth we paid the amount.

We later discovered that the entire time they failed to supply us with a copy of the outstanding bill, they had applied adverse credit to our personal files. How can this be right? Surely a customer cannot be expected to pay a bill without first receiving the bill.!! We asked them to remove the adverse credit, but TW refused.

We did not receive a bill again for over 9 months. We later discovered that they had moved our account to another persons' name and were demanding payments from them. They never told us they had done this and we had never asked them to transfer the account.They then applied adverse credit to this other person's file although they were repeatedly told that this person was not legally responsible for the bill. Later they claimed I had told them to pursue bills from this individual when in fact they had misused personal information.

We complained to the CCW and after 18 months we were told that the CCW do not have the power to make the water companies do anything. They asked us to raise the matter to the ICO. The ICO then advised that their investigations were evidence-based, however they proceeded to make a decision without reviewing any evidence. TW had posted emails and responded to SARs to email addresses not registered with them.

As a result of this, my account statement is a mess and despite having spent over an hour with TW customer services neither they nor I can make sense of my latest account statement. I loathe the fact that they have yet to explain where my £700 odd has disappeared to, and why despite escalations to the CEO team and my MP, I am yet to receive any explanation of the transactions on my account. Am I supposed to keep paying a company that is continuously unable to explain why payments made are not reflected on the account statement and why they cannot explain transactions showing on the statement??

Who can I reach out to resolve this? I cannot afford to keep paying without clarification on where my money is going!!!!

Boohoo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6656788/thames-water-billing-disarray

I can't see how this has been going on for all this time and nobody wants to help sort it out.

Have you checked your credit file to see if there are any markers on it?

A long shot but have you tallied up all TW bills and deducted payments made to them from the screenshots or images you have and see whether you owe them or they owe you