Customer Care - Not!

Sent to Thames Water "customer services" and their CEO on 17 May. Needless to say, no one has bothered to answer:

"4 March 2009 you wrote to me advising that you owed me £120.74, and requesting that I ring you to obtain the credit.

26 March 2009 I rang and gave all necessary information, eg bank details, I was advised that the credit would be processed.

16 May 2009 I received a letter from you referring to my call of 26 March, asking for my utility bills.

16 May I rang your offshore third party "help" centre to ask why it took over 8 weeks to query the call I made in March, and why the credit had not been paid.

I asked 3 times as to why it took 8 weeks to send the letter, the first two times your "help" centre operative claimed to be looking up the details; the third time I asked she deliberately cut me off (note I know the difference between an accidental cut off and a deliberate one).

Please answer the following:

1 Why is there over an 8 week gap between my call and your letter?

2 Why do you need utility bills to process the credit repayment?

3 Why did you not ask for these when I called in March?

4 Why have you not credited my bank account with the money you owe me?

You have 24 hours for someone based in the UK (not your foreign third party call centre) to take ownership of this problem, to come back to me and resolve it to my satisfaction.

Failure to do so will result in me adding this story to my site www.thameswaterisshite.com I will also advise my many contacts in the media as to your incompetence.

BTW, do you really think that outsourcing your "help" centre to a disinterested, incompetent foreign third party really improves customer "care"?

The clock is ticking."

Advice To Thames Water

Work to your customers' timeframe wrt answering complaints, not your timeframe!

Splashing Out

The Guardian reports that the three executive directors at Thames Water shared almost £1M in bonuses last year.

David Owens, the chief executive, received a bonus of almost £662K taking his overall remuneration package to almost £823K.

Stephen Shine, chief operating officer, and Mark Braithwaite, chief financial officer, received bonuses of £192,600 and £130,700 respectively.

No doubt the owners of 15,000 properties in Merton that were without water yesterday for seven hours, because of a major burst on Merton High Street, will be pleased to hear this.

More Bursts

Cherry Orchard Road and part of Lower Addiscombe Road is closed for emergency works after a water main burst flooding the basements of two homes.

Thames Water got permission from Croydon Council to start emergency works on the site about 2pm today.

They have been replacing the Victorian water mains along Cherry Orchard Road for the past few weeks.

Ali Badel. 51, the owner of Euro Dry Cleaners on Cherry Orchard Road says his business is being affected by the road works and that neither he nor any of the other businesses along the road were informed about the works.

"Nobody can come into the shop because the road is closed and they cannot drive their cars down here.

"We were not given any information about this; if we had been then at least we could be prepared. It is fairly amazing. This is the second time my business has been disrupted by Thames Water works."

Councillor Andrew Price said:

"Given that these works to Victorian mains are over 100 years overdue, the patience of the people of Addiscombe is being severely stretched by this further disruption".

Thames Water apologised to customers and road users for the disruption.

A spokesman said:

"We are working through until the road works have been completed, we are working as quickly as we can and hopefully they will be completed as soon as possible. This is an emergency repair and we had to get on the site as soon as possible."

Source The Croydon Guardian

Complaints Soar

The UK water watchdog said today that written complaints to water companies increased by nearly 31 pct this year, with billing and charging concerns making up half of the complaints.

Figures compiled by the Consumer Council for Water showed that 78 pct of the 241,000 complaints came from customers of Macquarie Bank's Thames Water, United Utilities PLC and Severn Trent PLC.

Customers of Portsmouth Water, Yorkshire Water, Dee Valley Water, Folkestone and Dover Water and Tendring Hundred Water filed the lowest number of complaints per 10,000 customers.

Yve Buckland, national chair of the Consumer Council for Water, said:

"Water customers are becoming increasingly demanding of their companies. They see water companies making good profits and expect service, if not improving, then at the very least delivered to a good, consistent and reliable standard. They also want complaints dealt with 'right first time'.

We will be pushing water companies to improve these figures and provide a much better level of customer service, comparable with the best in other service sectors."

Source Hemscott

This story comes as no surprise to me!

Another Apology

Thames Water sent me another apology on 27th July, on top of the one they sent me a day or so earlier, maybe their internal communications ar not quite up to snuff?

The first paragraph of their apology makes interesting reading.

They note that I raised the fact that it took them 13 days to respond to my earlier complaints, then happily say that the 10 day deadline for answering mails etc is due to an agreement with the regulator; but that "this does not mean that we do not aim to reply to all customers as quickly as possible".

Am I missing something in their "logic" here, or have they totally missed the point that I made about taking 13 days to answer?

Maybe they don't understand what they have written?

Anyway, here is their apology in full:

"Thames Water
Customer Relations
Customer Services
P.O. Box 436
Swindon
SN38 1TU
Telephone: 08457 200897
Fax: 01793 424291

E-mail: Customer.Feedback@thameswater.co.uk
27 July 2007
Our Ref: 431258
Water Supply

Dear Mr Frost

Thank you for your e-mails of 16 and 17 July 2007. I note your comments about us taking 13 days to reply to your previous e-mail.

As agreed with our Regulator, we have ten working days to reply to all written correspondence,which includes e-mails. However, this does not mean that we do not aim to reply to all customers as quickly as possible.

I am very sorry to hear about the disruption to your water supply on 16July 2007, and I understand the inconvenience this must have caused you.

In view of your comments I have forwarded a copy of your e-mail to the contractors completing this work. They advised that there were a number of very short disruptions on 16 and 17 July 2007 while we transferred the new supplies onto the new main. Whilst we do our best to provide a constant supply of water, there are times when we need to turn off the water for maintenance work.

If we plan to carry out some work that will involve turning off your water for more than four hours, we will give you advance warning.

However,as this was not the case on this occasion we did not provide notification. On 16 July 2007 you contacted our contractors, Morrison, to advise that you were without water and that they arranged for a plumber to call at your property within two hours to investigate.

They found that the interruption to your supply was due to a build up of debris, which is impossible to avoid with pipework of this age, and they resolved this problem immediately.

I hope this information is helpful.

Yours sincerely

Customer Relations"

Thames Water Apologises

Thames Water rang to apologise to me today, they noted that they did indeed have a record of my numerous complaints made to them.

They will also be sending me a written apology.

They also noted that they had seen this site:)