Urban Utilities screw-up

Over a year ago I made a post whinging about the excessive water use figures (upwards of 700L per day) appearing on our bill. We checked for leaks but there were none. Quite a long time after that, after we had received our second bill showing water usage over 1100L per day (!!!), I wrote to Urban Utilities telling them I wasn't going to pay the bill until they had checked out possible problems at their end. By then we had had a plumber confirm that there was no possibility of a leak of that magnitude at our end. They told me to phone back for follow-up, and I requested that they conduct any follow-up correspondence by email. I like to have stuff in writing, and I don't see why I should pay to sit in their phone queue. I received no further correspondence.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago we received our latest water bill, with the previous unpaid bill also included in the amount.

Urban Utilities had replaced our meter, so obviously it was faulty.

Figures for the new meter (I had to get a calculator and work it out myself) showed an average of 348L per day being used- in line with what UU says is our local area average household consumption. So I just wrote them another email, which I thought I would post here for posterity (and I always like to be contacted by fellow pissed off customers who find these stories :) Let's hope they do the right thing... I was going to tag this post with the 'BAD customer service' tag, but I will allow that failing to consider the lower usage figures with the new meter (and the implications of such for past apparently excessive bills that I had complained about previously) could have been due to an oversight, a lack of conscientiousness. I will see how Queensland Urban Utilities responds to my email before whacking them with that tag.

Hi,

I emailed Urban Utilities some months ago regarding what appeared to be excessive water consumption figures on our bill. I requested follow-up by email but received none.

I see from the latest bill we have received that a new meter was installed on 19/05/2011. The water consumption with the new meter works out at 348L per day, pretty much in line with the local average household usage. Since our household size increased from 2 adults and 1 baby at the beginning of 2011 to 3 adults and 1 baby in March 2011, it is likely our actual water usage prior to then was even less than 348L per day.

I had suspected that we were being over-billed for quite some time, and the figures you will see below confirm that, being in all cases an awful lot higher than 348L per day. In two cases it was well over 1000L per day. The erroneous usage figures appear to date back to the time we moved into this house, in November 2009.

Issue date 29/04/2010: 726L per day
Issue date 26/07/2010: 547L per day
Issue date 26/10/2010: 1165L per day
Issue date 01/02/2011: 732L per day
Issue date 05/05/2011: 1109L per day
Issue date 01/08/2011: 547L per day (before new meter: 594L per day; after new meter: 348L per day)

I also see that this previous over-billing has not been taken into account, despite becoming obvious since the new meter was installed. The amount from the previous bill showing usage of 1109L per day (which, I informed Urban Utilities would not be paid until they investigated the excessive water usage figures), has been added to the current bill, without review or modification.

Given the evidence that I have been significantly over-billed on the basis of erroneously high usage figures for about 22 months, sometimes for water usage up to almost three times higher than what would appear to be our actual usage, I believe that the following ought to occur:

Either
A recalculation of all previous bills to my name (and my husband's) at this address be made in line with the new water usage figures (348L per day) and the amount I have overpaid be credited, with suitable interest (I note that Urban Utilities states that they charge 11% interest on overdue amounts) to my account.
OR the existing bill be waived in its entirety.


Thank you to the customer service-personnel whose job it is to deal with complaints like these, I am aware that none of you are personally responsible for the problems outlined here. I am keen, however, to receive proper follow-up of this matter in due course.

Kind regards,