Rye News has received the following letter from a genuine reader who wishes to remain anonymous but here’s a chance for those disadvantaged by the recent water supply problems to follow the example below in the hope that they too will receive the compensation due, good luck, Editor.
You may recall the water supply outage late September/early October. Well, where I live we were without water for 10 days.
I received my bi-annual water bill to find Southern Water had credited my account with £90. I checked the T&Cs on their website and thought to myself this is unacceptable.
Sooooo…. I contacted Southern Water. Explained the situation and requested they credit my account with something more inline with their T&C’s. I also very specifically asked them how many other customers affected by this outage they had short changed with compensation for the water outage. They told me mine was an isolated case. Well, I believe my account isn’t an isolated case.
A few days passed and they contacted me advising they had credited my account with £240. So a win for the little guy, but what about everyone else affected by that water outage? I am still waiting for an answer to my question.
One should note, Southern water are perfectly aware of all postcodes and houses that had reduced pressure and no water supply at all. The water tankers they put in place only fed an intermittent supply to a limited number of properties.
A final point of note, when contacting Southern Water, contact them by phone. Do not use their online chat or WhatsApp service since this goes through to a help centre of theirs based in India. And for data protection purposes, I do not feel comfortable using help centres based outside of the UK. In addition, only when you dig deeply into Southern Waters Terms of Service on their website, do they disclose these customer service features are based overseas.
Maybe this subject requires further investigation by yourselves and lobbying our local MP to pressure Southern Water to fairly compensate us customers. Times are hard for everyone right now, and an extra £150 or whatever in peoples pockets is not to be sneezed at!
Image Credits: Nick Forman .
‘You’re the only person affected’ sounds very familiar. It’s how the big Utility and Service companies operate!
Many residents and businesses in Camber were without water for six days. A complaint is currently being lodged with Ofwat.