My water bill

[caretaker]

Just over a year ago we was told all the houses will be fitted with a water meter, just before this we had a water leak just outside in my front garden, this took 6 weeks for it to be repaired.
They installed the meter and my monthly bill went from £47 to £25 and stay like that till this year, it went up to £45, I asked why, there answer was I owed £118, I asked was the bill estimated, they said no.
I was thinking maybe that leak is back, my front garden is damp were the leak was.
How can I check if I am using water as the meter is under ground and can only read it by using my camera.
If there is a small leak and I take a picture say with a 3 hour between photo's and not use any water in that time would this prove anything.
The last time it leaked we could hear water running but no sound to day.
Any suggestions on what I can do.

 

[dunbarhamlin]

The water board's site suggests doing exactly that. If there is any change in reading, turn off your house stop cock to tie down the location of the leak.

 

[caretaker]

I looked at the meter reading 00326 88 did not use any water for 3 hours then re-read still at 326 88, the 88 is in red.
Looks like I'm using to much water.
That number is for the year as it was first put in.

 

[Ed Bray]

Are you saying you have used 326 m3 in a year? That is a hell of a lot of water.

A typical family will use 2-3 m3 a week which is circa 100-150m3 a year, you are using over double that. My wife and I are not particularly conservative with our use of water and we typically use between 1-1.5 m3 a week.

1 m3 = 1000 litres (220 gallons)
326 = 326,000 litres (71,700 gallons)

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

I had EXACTLY this. Cut a long story short I had a series of letters with them arguing over the algorithm they used to estimate how much I should be paying for their leak! (My bill went from £276 to £600 which is how I spotted the leak in the first place).

I wont bore you with the correspondence but suffice to say when they finally admit the leak is on your side of the meter, make dam sure you scrutinise how they calculate the "unknowable" portion of lost water for which you've been billed.

In my case they weren't even planning to inform me of the leak! Had I not been informed by an engineer who was looking down the same hole, I might not have known. (The engineer was not from the water company). So I INFORMED THEM of their leak! You couldn't make it up. I know for a fact they have exception reporting software running on all their meters so they can monitor anything abnormal to keep control of leaks in their infrastructure. Isn't it funny how a client side leak which was more than double my normal consumption rate failed to trip their control software!!!

One of the passages in my letter to their Chief Exec was "what if an old lady had this happen to her and didn't have the wherewithal to look under the covers"? Their response was woefully inadequate and in my heart I just know they are overcharging people deliberately when this happens. This is white collar crime and no mistake. Be really careful when you scrub the bill and the maths.

 

[RossJarvis]

This is white collar crime and no mistake. Be really careful when you scrub the bill and the maths.

When I were a lad there was such a thing as public and private service, now everyone just wants your money. It's not a "crime" it's just "business", like the banks and all the other ****s.

 

[johnfarris]

Water bills have risen by 64% since privatisation compared to a 28% rise in average earnings. Profit margins in England for water companies are 3 to 4 times higher than in France, Spain or Sweden.

Renationalise water, energy and the railways. Let the profits made be ploughed back into the companies to ensure quality and lower prices.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

This is white collar crime and no mistake. Be really careful when you scrub the bill and the maths.

When I were a lad there was such a thing as public and private service, now everyone just wants your money. It's not a "crime" it's just "business", like the banks and all the other ****s.

My point about white collar crime is that I believe the water companies are deliberately failing to "fix" the leaks when it's in their financial interest to do so. They can so very easily plead "we weren't to know" until the leak was discovered when in fact their control systems lead me to believe they are very likely in the know when a customers average consumption changes above a threshold level (say 10% pa).

Even if they ultimately pay the money back to the consumer, they don't do so without applying the most punitive algorithm possible to guesstimate the leaked water and they have still been in possession of your capital all the time the leak wasn't fixed, earning interest which of course they wouldn't dream of repaying. Multiply that across the qty customers they have and suddenly you can see how it becomes a modest revenue stream (no pun intended).

I know a lot of people will think this is all conspiracy theory stuff but I lived in Australia for a while and while there worked in the trading room for Westpac bank. What an eye opener. The commercial and corporate desk would take investments for the overnight money markets every night of the week. Millions of dollars. The investors were every shape and size. The most surprising to me were a well known chain of off license shops (akin to our Oddbins) and many different county councils. These legal entities would have pooled the cash from their chains of retail outlets (or public money in the case of councils) and literally bet it on some risky overnight investment. Their profits were being subsidised using public capital literally from the till at the end of the days trading. One spectacular failure caused one company to go bust literally overnight as it over extended itself on a duff investment. All its staff lost their jobs and the creditors got virtually nothing back. No law against that at all apparently!

So that kind of activity is exactly why the likes of Utility companies do these apparently small and petty cash retaining exercises that can be passed off as "admin errors". Because they invest the money that doesn't even belong to them.

Now I have no idea whether they're doing that in this case, probably not but it wouldn't surprise me one bit having seen what goes on with my own 2 eyes.

 

[caretaker]

Help, can anyone tell me if this is good for 2 days.
Old reading 326 88.
New reading 327 63. Just did this reading.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Water bills have risen by 64% since privatisation compared to a 28% rise in average earnings. Profit margins in England for water companies are 3 to 4 times higher than in France, Spain or Sweden.

Renationalise water, energy and the railways. Let the profits made be ploughed back into the companies to ensure quality and lower prices.

Yes, I remember the vast amount of money they made the country when nationalised. :roll:

 

[paulm]

Hi Reg, can you turn the stopcock in the house off for a while, half hour or hour perhaps, and see if the meter reading changes at all in that time ? If the meter still changes with the stopcock off then either the meter is faulty or there is a leak between the meter and the house stopcock. I think that's the first thing to establish ?

If all is well with that test above and the meter doesn't change then the next thing to do is turn the stopcock back on and check the meter again in another half hour or hour or so during which time you don't use any water in the house, does the meter reading change then ? If so you have a leak in the house or a garden tap or similar ?

That way you will know if you have a leak or not, and whether it is in the house or between the meter and the house. If no leaks then you can start to think about why else the usage may be high ?

Cheers, Paul

 

[Ed Bray]

This is white collar crime and no mistake. Be really careful when you scrub the bill and the maths.

When I were a lad there was such a thing as public and private service, now everyone just wants your money. It's not a "crime" it's just "business", like the banks and all the other ****s.

My point about white collar crime is that I believe the water companies are deliberately failing to "fix" the leaks when it's in their financial interest to do so. They can so very easily plead "we weren't to know" until the leak was discovered when in fact their control systems lead me to believe they are very likely in the know when a customers average consumption changes above a threshold level (say 10% pa).

Even if they ultimately pay the money back to the consumer, they don't do so without applying the most punitive algorithm possible to guesstimate the leaked water and they have still been in possession of your capital all the time the leak wasn't fixed, earning interest which of course they wouldn't dream of repaying. Multiply that across the qty customers they have and suddenly you can see how it becomes a modest revenue stream (no pun intended).

I know a lot of people will think this is all conspiracy theory stuff but I lived in Australia for a while and while there worked in the trading room for Westpac bank. What an eye opener. The commercial and corporate desk would take investments for the overnight money markets every night of the week. Millions of dollars. The investors were every shape and size. The most surprising to me were a well known chain of off license shops (akin to our Oddbins) and many different county councils. These legal entities would have pooled the cash from their chains of retail outlets (or public money in the case of councils) and literally bet it on some risky overnight investment. Their profits were being subsidised using public capital literally from the till at the end of the days trading. One spectacular failure caused one company to go bust literally overnight as it over extended itself on a duff investment. All its staff lost their jobs and the creditors got virtually nothing back. No law against that at all apparently!

So that kind of activity is exactly why the likes of Utility companies do these apparently small and petty cash retaining exercises that can be passed off as "admin errors". Because they invest the money that doesn't even belong to them.

Now I have no idea whether they're doing that in this case, probably not but it wouldn't surprise me one bit having seen what goes on with my own 2 eyes.

What you have failed to realise is that the water company is not responsible for any leak inside the boundary of the property, it is the responsibility of the householder or landlord. Should the leak be of too high a volume the water company can force the householder to fix the leak or in extreme cases they will fix the leak and charge the householder for the costs incurred.

It is not in the water company's interest to not pursue leakage and it's repair, it is one of the statistics they are measured against and they do not have to repay any money from the leak, but if you are connected to the Sewer Network, if the leak can be proven to have not 'returned to the sewer' then the amount that would have been apportioned to that part of the bill could be repaid.

Still, knowing the actual facts is not as inflammatory as heresay, fantasy and paranoia.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

What you have failed to realise is that the water company is not responsible for any leak inside the boundary of the property, it is the responsibility of the householder or landlord. What you have failed to realise is that this particular leak was not within my boundary but WAS after the meter. Still, knowing the actual facts is not as inflammatory as heresay, fantasy and paranoia.

Agreed so it's probably worth checking the facts before you post a refutation!

Just a wild stab in the dark....don't work for a Utility by any chance?

 

[Ed Bray]

What you have failed to realise is that the water company is not responsible for any leak inside the boundary of the property, it is the responsibility of the householder or landlord. What you have failed to realise is that this particular leak was not within my boundary but WAS after the meter. Still, knowing the actual facts is not as inflammatory as heresay, fantasy and paranoia.

Agreed so it's probably worth checking the facts before you post a refutation!

Just a wild stab in the dark....don't work for a Utility by any chance?

Yes, and it's a Water Company.

I was not specifically talking about your leak as I did not have all the facts of your case, what I did object to was your paranoid suggestion that the Water Companies (as you did not specify one in particular therefore are tarring all with a single brush) have an agenda on their leakage policy to prevent informing people of leakage to make more money. This is so far from the truth as to be laughable.

First of all you really need to understand the limitations put on Water Companies by OFTWAT with regard to both their leakage amounts and SIM (service incentive mechanism) scores which are dramatically multiplied by unwanted custom contacts, these then multiply up logarithmically with every additional contact so it is often cheaper and less hassle to 'pay the customer off' at an early stage than to have the penalties for increased customer contacts which would be levied by OFTWAT which can easily run into millions of £s.

The Water Company I work for have a policy of automatically informing customers if they have a higher than normal bill from a metered supply that this could indicate that there is a leak on their supply. This is in the form of a leaflet along with the information of how to check for a leak (or fraudulent use of a supply) which is enclosed with the bill before being sent out. I may be wrong, but I suspect that this would be the case for all the other water companies in the UK as they too are shackled by the same constraints from OFTWAT as our company is.

Don't get me wrong, I am not pretending our Water Company is all sweetness and light and all is well in our area. They have laid off many workers and now are undermanned, they routinely outsource work that we are now paying over the odds to get done but without the overheads (but at a poorer quality), they are constantly selling off prime land and disused assets in order to make themselves less susceptible to takeover and the prime driver for all this is to make larger profits, but aggravating your customers is not the way to do this.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

What you have failed to realise is that the water company is not responsible for any leak inside the boundary of the property, it is the responsibility of the householder or landlord. What you have failed to realise is that this particular leak was not within my boundary but WAS after the meter. Still, knowing the actual facts is not as inflammatory as heresay, fantasy and paranoia.

Agreed so it's probably worth checking the facts before you post a refutation!

Just a wild stab in the dark....don't work for a Utility by any chance?

Yes, and it's a Water Company.

I was not specifically talking about your leak as I did not have all the facts of your case, what I did object to was your paranoid suggestion that the Water Companies (as you did not specify one in particular therefore are tarring all with a single brush) have an agenda on their leakage policy to prevent informing people of leakage to make more money. This is so far from the truth as to be laughable. If you didn't have all the facts, how were you able to make a rational value judgement about my rant?First of all you really need to understand the limitations put on Water Companies by OFTWAT with regard to both their leakage amounts and SIM (service incentive mechanism) scores which are dramatically multiplied by unwanted custom contacts, these then multiply up logarithmically with every additional contact so it is often cheaper and less hassle to 'pay the customer off' at an early stage than to have the penalties for increased customer contacts which would be levied by OFTWAT which can easily run into millions of £s.

The Water Company I work for have a policy of automatically informing customers if they have a higher than normal bill from a metered supply that this could indicate that there is a leak on their supply. This is in the form of a leaflet along with the information of how to check for a leak (or fraudulent use of a supply) which is enclosed with the bill before being sent out. I may be wrong, but I suspect that this would be the case for all the other water companies in the UK as they too are shackled by the same constraints from OFTWAT as our company is.

Don't get me wrong, I am not pretending our Water Company is all sweetness and light and all is well in our area. They have laid off many workers and now are undermanned, they routinely outsource work that we are now paying over the odds to get done but without the overheads (but at a poorer quality), they are constantly selling off prime land and disused assets in order to make themselves less susceptible to takeover and the prime driver for all this is to make larger profits, but aggravating your customers is not the way to do this.

I fully accept the water companies are regulated. One has to ask the question, why is it necessary to fund a public body dedicated to creating a set of governance principles for an industry if they are so hell bent on helping customers! Also, despite the presence of the regulatory framework, because I DO know the facts in my case I can categorically state that the rules were not followed, not even close. For the sake of interest here are the facts. My bill had more than doubled before I INFORMED the water company about this particular leak. It was clear that it had been going for some time and yet no information from the Utility to either satisfy my circumstances or avoid a big stick from the regulator. So those are the drivers behind the rant you very kindly (without knowing the facts) described as paranoia. And I freely admit it was in the territory of rant rather than rational critical analysis of the water companies in general. But no....don't tell me....it was an admin error....just in my case....normally, due to the pressure of the regulator, the rules are followed. Your response is ironically not dis-similar to that which I received from the utility in question. A rush to defend the indefensible quoting how and why they couldn't have got it wrong...when clearly they did.

I specifically asked them (in writing) to respond and publish their documented policy on how they deal with my scenario because I wanted to be assured that the proverbial "little old lady" wouldn't have to suffer what I went through and they wouldn't.

One thing we agree on is the relentless pursuit of profits is the primary driver behind much of their unacceptable practice but if you're naïve enough to believe that major corporations don't break the rules in order to serve fiscal policy then that's where we'll have to (wait for it).....agree to disagree

 

[rafezetter]

How many of us have witnessed long term leaks from faulty water supply pipes gushing water on public roads - earlier this year along the road that leads to the train station - that I go to 6 days a week - there was a leak of water literally pouring across the road. I'd guesstimate it took 6 weeks before I saw a water truck wrok crew and 3 more before the water stopped running - it must have been a stupendous amount of processed water lost - I know it was processed as there was no stink.

Yet we constantly hear about how our prices go up because of all the cost involved in doing the processing, and the often ridiculous ways the water companies carry out works.

2 years ago we had works all along our road that lasted for many months - the holes were dug, worked in, then filled, then dug again then filled - dug, filled - it was a farce.

I have to agree with above - it always seems so convenient that each time a complaint is made yours is the "admin error" that got away, and that utility companies would not NEED the regulators if they were as clean as they claim.

Anytime the bottom line profit is wrangled over by shareholders and Boardroom bonuses set by profit levels, honesty and fair play to the customers goes out the window - there isn't a company of any size in business today that would be happy to announce to anyone:

"Hey we made a pre-tax loss of stupid millions this last fiscal - BUT we didn't have a single unhappy customer all year, so that's something to smile about eh?"