Water Meter Woes
Water companies have the right to meter water in areas that are seriously water stressed that should cut waste and save consumers money. However the Watchdog team have been hearing from water customers who say they are let down by the water companies using these mandatory meters.
Watchdog spoke to Thames Water customer Richard who told it that in May 2023, his annual bill shot up from around £170 to over £1000 overnight. The company sent someone to check for leaks, and discovered a meter mix-up.
“I'm not being billed for my water. I'm being billed for somebody else's” he said.
With two meters sitting next to each other outside his house, Richard explained that “the metre on my bill is different to the metre that's to my house”, he’s told us that despite Thames Water sending out three engineers, bills for the wrong meter kept coming, and the problem didn’t go away.
Richard’s most recent bill from Thames Water showed that he still owed £250.
“The whole billing thing. It just shows disorganisation.” He said.
In the face of letters from Thames Water showing that his credit rating could be effected by non-payment, Richard is estimating and paying a monthly amount himself. He conducted an experiment that showed even when he’s not using water he’s being billed for it.
“It's causing sleepless nights, stress. I just don't know what to do.” He said.
Watchdog also spoke to Thames Water customer Jagdish who in December 2022 agreed to a water meter. With just him and his wife at home, it should have helped reduce his bills from £60 to just £12 a month. But instead they went up, to more than £100.
Jagdish told us “Their comment was that your usage is very, very high. We're going to send an engineer around to check for any leakages externally. He said there's got to be a leak indoors. You'd have to get a plumber out to check it out.”
Jagdish then spent £350 on a plumber to check for internal leaks, and they replaced the toilet valves as a precaution. He then sent the report on to Thames Water, but it’s still demanding an update.
“How much can I do? The bill just keeps going up and up. It's around £1600, £1700. It's stressing me out. I can't sleep. What am I supposed to do?” e said.
We asked Andy White from the Consumer Council For Water what’s going wrong, who confirmed that it’s most common area of complaint is about metered billing. He went onto explain:
“There are certainly particular problems with Thames, but actually the whole sector needs to up its game in this area. If water companies want their customers to embrace metering, and recognise the benefits of it, then they need to get things right. It's far too often that they're making mistakes on people's accounts.”
In response a spokesperson from Thames Water, commented:
“We’re committed to delivering a great service and we’re very sorry to customers where this hasn’t been the case. We have carefully reviewed both customer issues and accept that we’ve fallen short of the standards we hold and recognise that we need to do better and have apologised to them.
“While we are resolving both customer complaints, we have paused billing on their accounts. Once we have rectified the issues, we will also issue a goodwill payment for the inconvenience caused.
“We’re determined to turnaround our performance and are proposing record investment over the next five-years. As part of this we’re working to improve our digital systems, resolving more billing and operational issues within 24 hours and allowing customers to resolve more issues online.”
On their smart meter rollout, Thames said:
“We’re eight years into our smart meter rollout and have installed over 1 million meters across our London and the Thames Valley, with the technology playing a critical role in detecting leaks and reducing water consumption. Our supply area was designated as an area of serious water stress by the Government in 2007.”
An Ofwat spokesperson said
“We're sorry to hear about the poor customer experiences 大象传媒 Watchdog has shared with us. We expect water companies to help customers when they encounter problems and are pleased that CCW is helping with these cases, as the consumer body charged with helping to resolve individual customer complaints. Ofwat has put water companies on notice to improve customer service and with recently announced new powers, where we see failure, we can and will take action which could result in significant fines.”
