Water companies...rip off!

summervale

2 Years ago I had a water meter fitted. I have had no change of circumstance, and where I live we have SE Water to supply fresh water and Southern for Waste.
With SE WAter there has been little change and I pay roughly £15pm on DD.
Southern Water sent me a recent letter stating that I owed them £80, despite paying them £15pm also. To cover this they would charge me £37! pm, or I could send them a cheque for £80.
Having spent a considerable time this morning I eventually got to the bottom of the problem. Southern Water are now charging 50p a cubic litre more than SE Water!! This is a total disgrace.
What galls me is there is no option whatsoever to shop around!
The Council for Water was worth than useless when I called them, as they are unable to deal with pricing!
Anything I can do?

icefall

Is there an Ofwat or something similar you can complain to

veloo

I was paying £25/mth, before I got my water meter a few years ago. I was kept waiting for almost a whole year, before they installed my water meter. I wondered why they kept delaying me for no particular reason...

After I got my water meter installed, the first year I paid only £8/mth. Then, they kept increasing the rates by a few pounds every year or so. I wonder, if water is getting expensive every year. I can understand petrol getting more expensive, but water...???

I think the Water regulator is probably in cahoots with the operators themselves. Do you see any competition at all? This is a nice business to be in... Charge exorbitantly for something which costs nothing... Get your customers to pay for any of your mistakes too... like water leaks...etc...

deanos

Yes water is getting more expensive, it goes up each year

birchscrub

South East water are charging you to supply fresh water that, depending on where you live, doesn't need much cleaning. Southern Water are cleaning up all your wastewater so it can be put back in to the river or out to sea. That's why the bill is more - they're doing a different job and a more expensive one.

birchscrub

And as a follow up - it isn't possible to have competition for water like gas or electricity. Water isn't the same - you know how your tea tastes funny when you go on holiday? you can't have lots of companies 'making' water and putting it in a system that they take it out of somewhere else liek gas and leccy. all the minerals that come from the rocks that the water fell on interact and you get funny colours and tatstes that we wouldn't want to drink. It isn't the regulators or the companies at fault here - its Maggie selling us all a lie that there could be competition....


that feels better......

anony_mouse_5

the tip is to regularly read the meter yourself (obviously if it is safe to do so)
and build up a history yourself. then when the bill comes you can compare your readings with the bills,
mistakes do happen and if the meter is outside think it is in a small chamber that possibly has water getting into it as well as mud and animals.
a meter can be misread fairly easily (1 looks like 7 and 3 looks like 8 etc)
it could be a misread.
also once you have 2 reads if you divide the amount used by the number of days between reads you will get your average daily consumption (ADC this will indicate what your daily usage is.