It's that time of year when all my bills come through (because it's 18 years since I moved to London). My TV licence is up for renewal, my electricity bill came in the post, my Travelcard needs renewing and then the water bill arrived. It seemed quite expensive. Normally my half-yearly water bill comes in around £100, and this was close to £200.
So I checked. Yes, my water bill's been quite consistent since 2013, it's assumed I was using 29 cubic metres of water every six months. But suddenly Thames Water were trying to charge me for 60, which seemed odd given that I haven't changed my water consumption habits. One bath a day, because I don't have a shower, plus the usual cooking/washing/sanitation flow, nothing more.
So I checked again. Yes, it was of course an estimated bill, so maybe they'd just estimated badly. Except their last bill was an estimate too, and the bill before that, indeed every single water bill back to 2013. Perhaps their computer had suddenly decided to readjust my estimate, given that nobody had come to take an actual reading for six years.
So I checked again. I had a water meter fitted in 2008, after which my bills had been based on actual readings up until August 2013, then suddenly it was estimates only. My water meter isn't readily accessible, so there was a very good reason why staff might have found it hard to reach, but instead it looked like they'd given up trying.
So I checked again. It looked like every single one of my water bills since 2013 had been based on the fact I must be using 0.153 cubic metres of water a day, because that's what I was using back in 2013. Now suddenly they'd started assuming I was using 0.3 cubic metres instead. According to the figures, 0.300 precisely.
So I checked outside. I went exploring to find my water meter, and discovered that my actual total was 40 cubic metres less than they said it was. What's more, my reading was very close to what the estimate would have been if only they'd carried on calculating my estimate the same way as before. But they hadn't, they'd doubled it.
So I rang them up. It took a while to get through, but at least it was a Freefone number so I wasn't overly concerned. I tried going the automated route, entering my account number and my meter reading, but for some reason the system refused to accept it. So it was time to wait for an actual person.
So I chatted to Anita. I explained what was up and gave my reading, then got put on hold for a while. I guess alarm bells ring when a customer provides a reading that's a lot lower than the estimate. But when the operator came back she was fine about it, and said she'd send out a revised bill, so that was all well and good.
But I continued. I queried why I'd suddenly received a bill based on an estimate which was double what I was normally charged. She couldn't say, but did eventually suggest it might be because "after a long series of estimated bills we might have increased the estimate to encourage the customer to get in touch with us".
So I protested. I told her this was an appalling way to treat customers, or perhaps she'd invented this excuse to get herself out of a hole, and whichever of the two it was I was very much unimpressed. But I didn't push the point further because I like to be polite, and she'd already cut my bill, so I said thanks and hung up.
So it pays to check. A water bill that had been pretty much in step with reality had suddenly leapt in price by a factor of two for no adequately explained reason, but my phone call had stopped the greedy water company in their tracks. This is why I like having paper copies of past bills to refer to.
A much more pressing problem is that an engineer from what would have been the gas board came round yesterday and declared my kitchen appliances unsafe, so turned off my supply, and now I can't boil potatoes, bake a pie or fill a bath with hot water for the foreseeable future. If nothing else, at least it'll reduce my next water bill.
