News
Water audit experts H²0 Building Services claim water companies continue to resist legitimate claims for refunds.
Author: Graham Mann, Water Audit Expert.
With the water market opening up in Scotland and the incumbent water provider Business Stream loosing customers due to water consultants such as H²O Building Services brokering pretty impressive not to be missed 3 1/2 year switch water supply contracts averaging discounts of between 11% to 16% on water and waste water costs and with competition looming in England and Wales around 2017 water companies have attempted to reinforce the message on “Quality and Service”.
Take for instance Severn Trent Water claiming it delivers “an unrivalled service for large scale water users wanting to cut their costs” great message on the face of it, the reality is very different as companies such as Severn Trent Water continue to provide poor customer service in areas such as claims for refunds, there is a continued resistance in repaying monies to customers due to errors on water billing, taking much longer to resolve cases and refusing to pay any form of compensation or interest even on claims of over £ 200,000 going back 13 years!!
In addition, an on-going case on a large business park where Severn Trent Water have installed an on-line flow logger (AMR) automatic meter reader to the two incoming water meters over 6 years ago, they provided a download of the graphs showing a large night flow indicating 50% of the water passing through the water meter was flowing and unaccounted for. H²O completed extensive water leak detection, eventually the complete water supply had to be replaced and the water consumption had dropped 50% and the night line is now at zero, now H²O have submitted a leakage claim for £ 80,000 and Severn Trent are refusing to supply historical AMR flow data going back 6 years as they know it will further substantiate our claim on behalf of their own customer they are now stating they will only refund back to 2012 as that is the only period of time Severn Trent Water will provide AMR night line data for. No further night flow data will be provided as Severn Trent Water are claiming “data protection” so their own customer cannot be provided with their own flow data! We wonder why?
Other such instances are now arising with the incumbent water supplier Business Stream in Scotland where they are requesting unreasonable levels of additional information relating to property drainage charges and refusing to visit site to investigate claims. The latest being a £ 20,000 overcharge on an on-going case since March of this year, 6 months to date with no end in sight with Business Stream blaming Scottish Water the whole seller of the water and waste water services. Do service levels not exist in Scotland? it appears not and we have it on good authority over 100 claims are stuck in their system over quite a long period of time totalling many £ 100,000’s and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Other water companies are also providing poor levels of service and poor customer co-operation as they all will be jostling for increased market share as markets open up to competition, there are opportunities for some water companies to step up to the plate and shine through, we have yet to see evidence just yet.