[Help] Southern Water - Metered Bill / Leak, advice please

[Cheshire Cat]

My water meter is inside the house, so not sure where my liability starts and stops. Nasty feeling it is at the property boundary, not at the meter location.

 

[arewethereyet?]

Southern Water have said that they will locate the leak. Given the size of the bill they think it’s a large leak and will be easy to trace.. they’ll then advise whether it’s my problem or theirs... checking home insurance as we speak!

Given that they have recently been heavily fined for their completely inept attitude go finding and fixing leaks, i would have thought you were highly likely to come out favourably on this. If you don't I would certainly take it to ofwat.

 

[arewethereyet?]

How do the readings get reported? Over here someone manually has to lift the drain cover in the street and take it. And really water usage should be fairly consistent through the year so no requirement to read monthly

Not anymore they don't, it's all done digitally with meters, the van drives up the road/street etc and takes electronic reading as they pass each property.

 

[Mr Bridger]

My water meter is inside the house, so not sure where my liability starts and stops. Nasty feeling it is at the property boundary, not at the meter location.

Yep , Still up to the boundary of the house.

 

[ac gull]

had similar issue with a bill from Severn Trent two / three years ago

after a few irate / blunt phone calls they admitted meter was faulty and they had known it was faulty for a while

they replaced meter and all other meters down our road as whole batch they had installed were all faulty

after a bit more argy bargy on the phone they agreed to replace ridiculous bill with one based on average daily usage in previous six months

just keep moaning at them

 

[Leegull]

Given that they have recently been heavily fined for their completely inept attitude go finding and fixing leaks, i would have thought you were highly likely to come out favourably on this. If you don't I would certainly take it to ofwat.

If it doesn’t go in my favour then I’ll definitely try the ofwat route. I’ve just twigged that my bill runs for the period from 05 December until 13 June but their letter was dated 28 August and was only received yesterday.

So that’s two and a half further months on from reading my meter, when I’ve had 1400 litres of water leaking away every day before they raise it with me. That System doesn’t seem to work very well for their customers.

 

[Sirnormangall]

Given that they have recently been heavily fined for their completely inept attitude go finding and fixing leaks, i would have thought you were highly likely to come out favourably on this. If you don't I would certainly take it to ofwat.

I agree. The water companies are supposed to be taking action to reduce leaks. Given the technology that’s now available you would think there must be a systems solution that could report unusual water usage. Customers could then be alerted earlier to possible problems and water leakage could be reduced: a “win win” for everyone........but wait, wouldn’t it cause a reduction ( god forbid) in water company profitability and executive pay?

 

[Paul Reids Sock]

I agree. The water companies are supposed to be taking action to reduce leaks. Given the technology that’s now available you would think there must be a systems solution that could report unusual water usage. Customers could then be alerted earlier to possible problems and water leakage could be reduced: a “win win” for everyone........but wait, wouldn’t it cause a reduction ( god forbid) in water company profitability and executive pay?

I think that the problem would be that the are penalised for the leakage on their system. They calculate it (If I remember correctly) as the amount that is put in to the system - the amount registered as used via meters. A percentage of the rest is presumed leakage. As a result this would show as usage rather than leakage.

By fixing it thought they will look better for the lower usage targets that they get but don't think the rewards are as much as the fines for leakage.

Smart meters were meant to have been rolled out everywhere by now. I was in a few meetings back in 2015ish where they were discussing the national roll out being complete by 2019/20. I believe they have managed a tiny percentage of this whilst gas/electric have flourished.

Leegull, keeps us up to date as there appears to be a few ex water company people on here that will be able to support you going through the process. One thing I would again suggest is making sure you view their Approved Plumbers list for the repair and get them onsite at the same time as SW to do a proper handover/analysis