Utilities Part Two – Anglian Water

Following on from yesterday’s post about nPower’s abysmal customer service, I’ve also been dealing with Anglian Water for far too long since moving in to the new place.

It’s not been anything quite as drastic as the farce with nPower – at least Anglian got my name right from day one. It’s just they’ve never managed to get my bills right.

Part of the problem is the metering setup. For some godforsaken reason, my house (and the others in my section) all have two meters: one for the main property, one for the separate outbuilding. This seems to cause them no end of confusion – my first meter reading, they managed to put the same reading in for both meters which overcharged me on one by some sixty units!  Since then, despite no end of times telling them the outbuilding one only has a washing machine in it (and is thus epically low on usage) every damn bill or reading needs to be done twice, because they don’t believe the first one.  (Personally I’m not keen on what this also says about their attitude to their own meter-reading people, but we’ll leave that for now)

Compounding this has been an ongoing issue with their ‘outreaders’ – little grey boxes that (supposedly) connect to the main meter, and mean the meters can be read without the person needing to access my property.  Except that

1. Some twat decided that they should both be situated within the courtyard bit between house and outbuilding. Yes, the bit with no access from the outside, without going through the damn house.  #slow_handclap right there.
2. At no point have the outboxes read the same as the actual meters.

I’ve had Anglian out twice to have the outreaders recalibrated to the meters now, so one would hope they were working. But no…

Back in July I had a meter-reading done. It was one of the days I wasn’t working, so that was fortuitous. And then I expected a bill – it normally comes in August. Nothing.  So I called them this week to find out what was happening – the last thing I want on my record right now is a “late payment” flag, particularly for a utility company.

Only they hadn’t sent a bill. As usual, the outhouse’s meter reading had tripped all their flags, so they needed to check the reading. (Done by a person, don’t forget)  I said I’d do a reading that evening, and then they could sort it out. I also said I’d do both the outreader and the meter itself.

Lo and behold, the outreaders are under-reading by about ten percent. The meter on the house says 98, the outreader says 88. The one on the outbuilding says 22, the meter says 25.  Yep, they’re still buggered then.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind their readings under-reporting by 10% – except I also don’t want hassle at some future date when someone reads the meter instead of the outreader, and suddenly I’m getting hit (again) for 50 units more than I expected.

They’re now coming out on Saturday to fit two ‘smart meters’, replacing the existing meter and outreaders. Supposedly these ones upload straight to a website, so I can monitor the usage and see if there’s a problem.  Considering the issues so far with them, you can be damn sure I’ll be keeping an eye on those reading for the rest of the year!