Water meter saga sees Gosport pensioner told she owes hundreds of pounds a month - not £20

Given her financial situation and living on her own, pensioner Veronica Walker was a longtime frugal water user. Her standing order for water routinely never exceeded £20.

But in August 2017 Veronica was told by Portsmouth Water that as her current billing was based on the usage of a family of four, it could be advantageous to consider having a water meter fitted to measure her actual usage and make further potential savings.

Her daughter, Julie, told Streetwise her mum believed it would be a lot cheaper, and promptly agreed to it.

‘Mum thought she was going to make savings when the meter was first installed at the encouragement of Portsmouth Water,’ said Julie.

‘She was told her bills wouldn’t exceed £28 a month however, when she subsequently got the same reaction from everyone that she’d be paying more for her water it sowed doubt in the back of her mind when the bills started to creep up.’

When in August Veronica’s outlay for water had rocketed £126.12 a month, she tried to raise the alarm with Southern Water, but the plea fell on deaf ears.

‘Mum was out of her mind with worry, said Julie.

‘She’d phone up Southern Water, they said it was Portsmouth Water, so she’d then phone up Portsmouth Water and they’d say the bill is from Southern Water, so she ended up going around in circles not getting anywhere because one company was blaming the other.

‘It developed into a game of ping pong, and her grief was compounded by the fact that nobody wanted to find out what was happening and come back to her. The onus was all on her.

‘If the problem had been acknowledged, and at least responded to when mum flagged it up to them there’d have been no cause to complain, but she just felt she was in a cul-de-sac and nothing was happening, apart from being passed from pillar to post.

‘No-one took ownership, and nobody took ownership of customer service either, so when in November she received a final bill for £812.66, we resolved to do something about it.

In the interim Julie went through all her mum’s paperwork with her. She rapidly concluded she hadn’t noticed the gradual increase in the water consumption figures over the past two years to an absurd 1,000 litres a day, simply because it had been obscured by the absence of routine six-monthly Southern Water bills.

When in September an engineer from Portsmouth Water was finally persuaded to turn up, he discovered the meter had been leaking. A month later an engineer came back to fix it.

But matters went from bad to worse when a Portsmouth Water operative followed up to read the meter, only to conclude it was still leaking and would have to be dug up and replaced.

The supply of drinking water and the discharge of waste water is managed by the two completely separate companies, who once alerted to Veronica’s situation were duty bound to investigate and take prompt remedial action.

When Streetwise got on the case and asked them to investigate, they both quickly sprang into action.

What we couldn’t fathom was how the recorded metered usage of 1,000 litres a day hadn’t set alarm bells ringing. It’s roughly the equivalent daily water usage of ten people, or 14 average laundry machine washes.

A spokesperson for Portsmouth Water admitted they’d fallen down badly on customer service.

He said: ‘It’s clear we have not dealt with the issue in line with both Mrs Walker and our own expectations. We apologise wholeheartedly to her as we have clearly not met our high standards on this occasion.

‘We were aware of Mrs. Walker’s concerns over her water bill in early September and once we visited her property and confirmed there was a leak we put a stop on her account so she would receive no further water bills until the issue had been resolved.

‘Once we’ve repaired a leak it’s normal practice to take some normal usage readings and calculate a leak allowance for the water lost, which would be deducted from her water bill.

‘We also informed Southern Water who typically will make a similar adjustment to the waste water bill.’

Portsmouth Water went on to tell us they supported metering because it helped customers avoid wastage. They fully understood that poor service standards might act as a deterrent to install meters, but went on to assure us that lessons would be learned from Mrs Walker’s experience and remedial measures were in the pipeline to ensure the continued delivery of excellent service to their customers.

In addition they had refunded her a leak allowance of £305.

Southern Water’s head of service delivery, Karen Sharpe, was equally contrite, and confirmed they’d agreed to refund an overpayment of £337.67.

A spokesperson for the company said: ‘We were very sorry to hear of the issues experienced by Mrs Walker, and we have been working alongside Portsmouth Water to resolve her complaint. A hold was put on her bill until the issues were resolved.’

A grateful Julie commented: ‘Mum was so exhausted by it all she now just wants to get on with her life. She literally lives on her pension and when she saw £162 going out every month she couldn’t afford it, let alone the £812.

‘Thanks to you it was finally sorted. I probably would have had the same treatment as mum just being sent from pillar to post with voices being raised but getting nowhere. I really don’t believe we’d have got anywhere without Streetwise getting involved.

‘The two companies weren’t connected and didn’t communicate with each other so your intervention was key to bringing it to a satisfactory conclusion.’